St. Louis Jewel Box Forest Park
Penguins and Poinsettias are the center pieces of the Christmas display at the Jewel Box in Forest Park. (AP Photo/Tom Gannam)

The Aldermen of the City of St. Louis didn’t think this one through. The city, one of the most violent in the nation, wanted to make their parks gun-free zones, but Missouri’s state preemption law effectively blocked it.

So the city dreamed up a cute work-around.

Guns now banned from St. Louis city parks

Missouri state law allows adults to carry guns in the open, so the new law reclassifies the parks and recreation facilities as child-care facilities, where guns are not allowed.

Maybe they were inspired by the St. Louis Zoo which designated itself an amusement park in order to ban gun there.

Congratulations, St. Louis. Running a collection of new “child care facilities” around the city comes with its own requirements. You now have to comply with a slew of state laws.

19CSR 30-63.010 requires you to put all of your park employees through comprehensive background checks.

Even if you call them “license-exempt” facilities, 19CSR 30-60.010 requires, inspections, equipment, certain personnel, numbers of personnel per child…the City will also need to hire registered nurses for the parks.

St. Louis is going to love the new park admissions procedures and all the reporting, too. Did they remember to file a Program Evaluation Questionnaire before they designated the parks as child care facilities.

I hope they’ve installed access controls for those parks as required by 19CSR 30-61.010. That’s probably going to require them to completely fencing in all the parks and set up entry control gates. I suppose they can hire more police officers for the other safety and security requirements.

At least now they’ll finally have to fix and open all the public restrooms. And install the child-specific equipment.

I could keep paging through Missouri state laws for more regulations. And I expect the city itself has a few child care laws of their own they forgot to check before making this move. But I hope I’ve made my point of what a bad idea this was, even without getting into Second Amendment and state constitution Art. I, Sec. 23 issues.

I  lived in St. Louis several years ago. I’m sorry to see the average intelligence of the government has not improved.

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59 COMMENTS

      • I’m from St.Louis and currently live here. It’s the government mainly. Yes some people are at fault and I’m going to be frank here. It’s not just the blacks in the hood, ghetto, in the city (as we consider the county to be different). Also, I wouldn’t say the local population IQ is low. Have you lived here? How many people have you talked to that lived here? It’s a combination of everything. St.Louis is not as bad as people make it out to be. I’ve been to some of the worse parts and never seen any shootings, got robbed, etc.

        • LOL, I almost spit out my coffee. Have to remember that one and pretend it was mine own gem when I tell it to the fam during Christmas. 🙂

        • But they practically invented hot wings in the Central West End so I have a soft spot for them.

          And they have dog town. And the Hill.

        • Saint Louis invented Hotwings? I’d honestly never heard that. Is this another one of those shared delusions like “we have the second best Mardi Gras in the world”?

    • “Enjoy your rape and stabbing.”

      Now, that’s not very nice.

      Consider it “An immersive cultural experience with the natives.” where they can “Learn new local customs”… 😉

  5. Maybe they were inspired by the St. Louis Zoo which designated itself an amusement park in order to ban gun there.

    While I do not agree that amusement parks should be “gun-free zones”, calling the zoo an amusement park is actually fairly reasonable/rational. Calling all parks “child care facilities” is pants-on-head crazy.

    • Let me tell you about this great idea we had for a trolly. It only costs five billion dollars, ran over budget and behind schedule, doesn’t work half the time and when it does, it goes nowhere.

      And this is the city that thinks it should be granted full control of the county.

      Can’t imagine why people think the city government is batshit.

    • True.

      OTOH, “child care facilities” can easily be “amusement parks” if you give the kits a bunch of caffeine and sugar right before the parents come to pick them up…

  8. Folks,
    Here is an idea to make sure that the Democrats don’t win the White House in 2020. I just went to the Registrar of Voters in my town and changed my party affiliation to Democrat. That allows me to vote in the Democrat Primary in this state. You have to be a registered Democrat to do that here. Now I will work to elect the absolute worst possible Democratic candidate on the ballot. Right now, who that is remains to be seen. The beauty of this is, I am telling every Democrat I know and it outrages them!!! Love it, love it, love it. Pass this idea on and get this going as a nation-wide trend!

    • The trouble is picking the worst democrat. With such a wealth of material to choose from, how do you narrow it down to one?

    • My state, Florida, has a separate primary for the President vs the regular primary (for the House, etc.). So I’m registering Dem to vote for whichever asshat has a change of winning the primary, but not chance of winning the general. Then I’ll switch back to Republican to vote in regular primary.

    • So I wonder how long until the media picks up on this and blames racist Republicans for trying to fix the election by getting rid of all the minority and female candidates in favor of old white guys? Lol

    • The trouble with that is figuring out who is the worst Democrat candidate/who has the least chances of winning the general election. I did just what you are talking about 3 presidential elections ago. I was sure there was no way Obama could win so voted for him in the Dem primary. Well, we know how that turned out….I now vote Republican.

  9. Sigh…

    The city rec center where I live is off limits to all firearms carriers at all times simply because the local high school holds a couple of classes per week in the swimming pool. Because you know, if some homicidal homo sapiens does decide to bust in, he’ll have to check his gun at the door first.

    The “liberals” have decided that guns are evil objects, and anyone who carries one without being ritually purified and anointed by Our God the Almighty State with a badge and uniform must be shunned.

  10. Why don’t the anti-gun politicians and elites show everyone they REALLY believe gun free zones are a viable solution to violent crime and murder. They should disarm their security details, then dress them all in a bright orange outfits with “GUN FREE ZONE” written on them. Top it off with big “GUN FREE ZONE” signs, and traffic safety cone style hats.
    That should keep them EXTRA safe.
    In the immortal words of Nancy Reagan, JUST SAY NO!

      • “……..I can go about my day.”
        Translation; Sitting in mommies basement, eating hot pockets and Cheetos, commenting on firearm related issues, even though you reside in an anti-gun state.
        Enjoy the day wallowing in that crapulance

        • DERPz has it out for me ever since I banged his mom, then wiped my d!ck clean on the living room curtains.
          Like I said before DERP, I’m sorry about the pecker tracks on the curtains, and the fact your mom is such a hosehound slut.
          Jeez, I can’t understand why the Derpster won’t accept my apology and move on (and out of his moms basement).

  11. Wait till a kid gets hurt in one of these child care facilities. Can the people of Saint Louis call DCFS on the government if there’s kids without parents there?

  13. With all the bums and junkies that live in my city parks, it might as well be considered taking care of kids.

  15. I was born and raised in and around St. Louis; moved around during my career, but now live 25 miles away in St. Louis County. It’s the Forrest Gump Syndrome…..”Stupid is as stupid does” and The Government Plantation in action. (Government Plantation is slavery updated to Political Correctness. Dems realized there is more money, power, and control in Government than cotton. Put most of all blacks and many non-blacks on the Government Plantation). And, they can tax others to pay for the shanty shacks, collard greens and sow belly, and…..they still get all the Defective Citizens’ votes. What a plan!!!) St. Louis City ( a city and its own county….1 0f 114 in counties in Missouri) wants to merge with surrounding St. Louis County (comprised of 90+ municipalities) to access the County money as the City is Demoractic BROKE. Also, want to dilute their crime and other negative stats by co-mingling with County. Bottom line of 70+ years of Democratic governance. Biggest success of their Democratic ways is the feeding and nurturing of Defective Citizens. Lacey Clay reps large segment of City in DC. Only person better off for him being in Congress is Lacey Clay……as always with politicians.

  16. When a MadMomsAgainstDumbDaycare goes off on the staff because little Sally poked Timmy in the eye, I don’t think she’s reading those no gunm sign’s.

  19. Sounds like gun owners need to ban together to sue the city to comply with all those laws now. That’ll force them to put up or kill the ban. Of course they will try to raise the taxes or steal it from other programs. St. Louis is like Chicago as proving their laws only help the criminals. And their police force if I’m not mistaken is an industry and not city run inity. Brought on by behavior during or shortly after the cival was era. I have freinds and relatives living in and around that city. They don’t have alot of good to say about the way things are run and some of the police practices used.

  20. SOoooo…care to explain “how” exactly making parks a “gun free zone” is going to protect our children and unarmed “law abiding parents” from the criminal/sociopath who brings a gun and starts murdering people??
    Your state slogan should be “welcome to the we’re morons state” criminals/sociopath’s visit our parks and schools, no one will shoot back.

    • Wow. You should be more aware. This state is a constitutional carry state and we really don’t have as many problems as other who are not given our population. St. Louis is in a world of their own and their police fore is privotly ran as mandated becouse of their stupidity back in the civil war era. Most of the shootings around the rest of the state are young punks whos parents did not instill repect and who aren’t man up enough to walk away from it or just go hand to hand with someone becouse they are not bold enough.
      But being a constitutional carry state it is also a castle law state and a stand your ground state. It has gotten the respect of alot of idiots who might otherwise be stupid.
      But as with all populace areas in the U.S. it still has its moments.

  22. “Congratulations, St. Louis. Running a collection of new ‘child care facilities’ around the city comes with its own requirements. You now have to comply with a slew of state laws.”

    So the “We’ll Show You” faction of “The Show Me State” is fixin’ to get shown? I’ll make the popcorn. Call it “The Backfire Heard ‘Round The World.”

    • I feel reasonably certain that the city just won’t be enforcing the zoning, safety, and health inspections on the parks that they would on actual child care facilities. that stuff’s just for the rubes, you know, to keep them in their place.

  25. I think it’s great that the democrats in charge think so highly of us! That we will follow the bad-faith laws that they put down for the sole purpose of denying us our rights and giving them an excuse to arrest us.

    I personally can’t think of any bad comparisons to make about a group of legislators who are willing to twist the law into knots in order to arrest a class of people they don’t want mingling about in public.

    I was okay with the rolling gun battles in St Charles, and the muggings and carjackings in Forest Park, and the rapes in Tower Grove Park. and the random getting shot at on I-70 in north county, but this… THIS! This will totally keep my gun (and me) out of their child care centers.

    Honestly, why not ram the city/county merger through and make everything from the Mississippi to the Missouri Rivers one great big child care facility? There’s plenty of free seats on the trolly, after all!

    • They should be required to make City Hall, the Statehouse, and other seats of government follow the same procedures. No armeed guards, just a bunch of informational, “Gun-Free-Zone” signs.

    • They should be required to make City Hall, the Statehouse, and other seats of government follow the same procedures. No armed guards, just a bunch of informational, “Gun-Free-Zone” signs.

  26. this means that every time there is an “incidence” in or around a city park the headlines will read ” Shooting in St Louis day care facility” Now that shows some creativity ! ! PM

  27. do “child care facilities” require immunization proof like public schools generally do? And how many children per present adult caretaker? Will they have to serve lunch?

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