With an overwhelming Republican majority in both chambers, it was surprising to Missourians that they were being ‘left behind’ as so many other states were advancing this legislation.
The Chairman of the Board for MOFC, Dr. Curt Frazier, knew that the Dorr Brothers were working on similar legislation in nearby Iowa, and asked them to assist in the fight that was brewing in Jefferson City.
Late in 2015, Aaron recruited then-State Representative Eric Burlison to carry this legislation for MOFC members, and H.B. 1408 was pre-filed on December 4, 2015.
Aaron and Chris immediately began whipping up support for this legislation in an effort to obtain cosponsors on the bill, both inside the legislature, and amongst gun owners across the state.
MOFC’s Aaron Dorr reviews H.B. 1408 (Constitutional Carry legislation) with then-Rep. Eric Burlison during the opening days on the 2016 legislature.
Chris handled much of MOFC’s digital program, running targeted social media posts statewide that resulted in tens of thousands of emails being sent into the Capitol. At the same time, Aaron worked the legislature in Jeff City, harnessing the grassroots pressure that lawmakers were feeling from their constituents — racking up dozens of cosponsors in the process.
But Aaron and Chris knew that if they wanted to get beyond just having the bill filed and adding a few dozen cosponsors, they were going to have to mobilize tens of thousands of gun owners from every corner of Missouri.
(This was made especially true in this case as the NRA refused to support this legislation. In fact, they attacked the bill behind the scenes for two months, and only got involved in this fight in the 11th hour when it was clear this bill was moving. Reuters news service covered this in detail, read their article on that here.)
Having run direct mail operations for MOFC’s sister organizations in Iowa and Minnesota for years, the Dorr Brothers knew that nothing can beat a well-run direct mail program when it comes to educating and mobilizing massive numbers of people.
With a budget in mind, they began an online and in-person fundraising program that would enable them to pull the trigger on this program.
While this would be impossible for most start-up non-profit gun rights organizations, the Dorr Brothers had an ace in the hole for the Missouri Firearms Coalition: their own in-house direct mail shop!
While direct mail is an incredibly effective tool in the fight for gun rights, hiring commercial shops to produce these campaigns is very expensive. But not running a mail program would likely mean that their bills would not get off the ground.
That’s why Aaron and Chris set up Midwest Freedom Enterprises, a small direct mail company that allows them to produce direct mail at a fraction of the cost that regular commercial shops charge! What’s more, having this shop in-house allowed them to time the delivery of these direct mail campaigns perfectly!
To learn more about Midwest Freedom Enterprises, and the fantastic work that they have done for gun rights groups in over a dozen states, go here.
With their direct mail, email, and digital mobilization program running at full tilt — and a ground game running full speed in the Capitol in Jeff City — it wasn’t long before the legislative leaders began to take notice.
The General Laws Committee soon took up the bill and moved in through their committee, setting the stage for the first floor vote on the bill.
At the same time, Aaron was working in Jeff City to find a Senate sponsor for this legislation.
A mountain of direct mail that the Dorr Brothers prepared for the Missouri Firearms Coalition in February of 2016, as they built grassroots support behind H.B. 1408 — Constitutional Carry law!
Senator Brian Munzlinger, the Senate Republican’s ‘gun guy,’ met with Aaron but did not want to carry the bill in the Senate, saying that it was too extreme and wouldn’t pass with a Democratic governor. Don’t forget about Senator Munzlinger, we’re going to come back to him later.
You see, while the NRA liaison in Missouri (who lived in Illinois) was bad mouthing the out-of-state ‘Dorr Brothers’ and while Senate Republicans didn’t want to carry this bill…something else was happening.
A massive amount of grassroots support was building in every corner of Missouri as a result of the direct mail, email and social media campaigns that Aaron and Chris were running for MOFC.
Lawmakers who had received a handful of emails on this bill began to receive them by the HUNDREDS, insisting that they support H.B. 1408 or face angry voters during the August primary.
But the first week of April, it was obvious that Constitutional Carry was going to pass the House of Representatives, at least.
And when the date for floor action was set, suddenly the NRA wanted to get involved. While their last minute involvement wasn’t lost on them, the Dorr Brothers were interested in passing this legislation for MOFC and welcomed help from all sides.
The NRA wanted to pass some minor gun bills that year, but their bills had no traction and no grassroots support. They approached Representative Burlison and asked if they could attach their agenda items to H.B. 1408.
Normally loading a bill up with too much stuff makes it very hard to pass. In fact, numerous insiders warned us that that was the NRA’s goal in the first half of April. But Speaker of the House Todd Richardson told Rep. Burlison he was resolved to pass H.B. 1408 — knowing that with an election right around the corner, this was the smart move.
But this presented an opportunity for the Dorr Brothers to advance even more Second Amendment freedom for MOFC members, who wanted to make Missouri a Stand-Your-Ground law state after passing Constitutional Carry.
Sensing that the momentum was on their side, Aaron asked Rep. Burlison to attach Stand-Your-Ground law onto H.B. 1408 as an amendment. Burlison agreed immediately, and the language was filed by Rep. Rick Brattin.
As momentum built for Constitutional Carry, Michael Bloomberg’s paid-for ‘volunteers’ flooded the Capitol in a wasted effort to stop what would become the largest gun bill in Missouri legislative history!
Late in the day on April 20, 2016, the House passed Constitutional Carry legislation for the final time, sending it over to the Senate for consideration.
But remember, Senator Munzlinger and Senate leaders had already told Aaron that passing Constitutional Carry was too difficult, that the bill was too controversial.
So despite the work that the House did on this bill, and the massive groundswell of support that this legislation enjoyed from gun owners, Senate Majority Leader Mike Kehoe refused to advance H.B. 1408.
Instead, the Senate sent S.B. 656 over to the House, a modest bill from Senator Munzlinger, that would cap the amount of money a county sheriffs office could charge when they issued a concealed carry permit.
Frankly, this was an insult to Representative Burlison and the members of the Missouri Firearms Coalition who were looking to secure much more freedom than this scrap of legislation would provide.
When conferring with Representative Burlison, we urged him to run an amendment to S.B. 656 and incorporate the entirety of H.B. 1408 and then send that back to the Senate, basically telling them that the House had no intention of allowing the Senate to stop Constitutional Carry!
And that’s exactly what the House did.
The Senate now had to decide if they wanted to kill the entire bill — incurring the wrath of every gun owner in the state — or pass the bill as amended.
Of course every single day, Aaron and Chris were using every tool at MOFC’s disposal to flood Jefferson City with calls and emails, insisting that the Senate pass S.B. 656, which was now the bill number for Constitutional Carry and Stand-Your-Ground law.
On May 12, 2016, with only a few hours to spare in the 2016 legislative session, the Senate passed S.B. 656 as amended, in a huge victory for the members of the Missouri Firearms Coalition.
Our victory was short-lived, however, as Governor Jay Nixon vetoed S.B. 656 six weeks later, on June 27, 2016, setting us up for a climatic 1 day veto-override session, that was going to occur in September.
In Missouri, these veto override sessions are an opportunity for the legislature to override the veto of the Governor.
But to override the Governor, the legislature would need to have the support of 2/3rds of the House and Senate.
To do that, the Dorr Brothers wanted to have a mountain of petitions ready to take to the Capitol for the September 14, veto override day.
We spent the summer gathering tens of thousands these petitions through our direct mail, email, and social media programs. The video from Representative Burlison, above, for example, was seen by over 285,000 gun owners on the MOFC Facebook page!
The Dorr Brothers had Representative Burlison record this video message, urging gun owners to sign a petition insisting that the legislature override Governor Nixon’s veto on S.B. 656!
But as we gathered petitions, we also began to develop our ‘whip count,’ — an internal ‘Yes/No’ vote count that would tell us how close we were to the 109 votes that we needed to guarantee the override.
The Republican caucus had 116 total members, and within a few weeks we knew we had an easy 100 votes in favor of the override. But we were 9 names short, and locking in those remaining names was not going to be easy.
The Dorr Brothers slammed Representatives Swan and Lichtenegger, who said they would vote no on the veto override vote, using social media posts like the one above.
A few legislators lost their August primary and threatened to not come back for the override session. Another lawmaker was seriously injured in a car accident and would not be able to attend.
And then, just a week before the override session, Republican State Representatives Kathy Swan and Donna Lichtenegger came out and publicly condemned S.B. 656 and announced they would be joining forces with House Democrats and Governor Nixon, by voting ‘No’ on the override.
Within two hours, Aaron had targeted social media posts on the MOFC Facebook page, boosted directly into their two districts.
At the same time, Senate leaders were again dragging their feet, with Majority Leader Kehoe telling our sources that he ‘wasn’t sure there would be time to deal with the gun bill.’
For most groups, that would be the end of the road.
But MOFC told the Dorrs to spend every last penny the organization had if they thought that they could get the 2/3rds majority needed to pass this monster gun bill.
So 6 days before the override vote, we unloaded in a dozen more Senate districts, spending close to $7,500 on memes like the one above, and urging gun owners to call their Senators and demand they stand up for gun owners by overriding the Governor’s veto.
The results were incredible.
Politicians began to scream and shout, demanding that MOFC let up on the pressure. But as seasoned veterans, Aaron and Chris doubled their efforts, flooding the Capitol with as many call and emails as humanly possible in the final days before the override vote.
When the big day arrived, we spent the morning delivering cases of petitions to targeted lawmakers, reminding them that if they voted no on this override vote, they would pay a
huge price in their district during the upcoming elections.
Chris Dorr, right outside of Senator Majority Leader Mike Kehoe’s office the day of the veto override session. Chris delivered thousands of petitions from gun owners in Kehoe’s district, insisting the Senate override Governor Nixon’s veto of S.B. 656.
Sure, that didn’t make the Dorrs a lot of friends in Jefferson City, but they weren’t there for that.
They were there to fight for the members of the Missouri Firearms Coalition, and to do everything they could to make Constitutional Carry and Stand-Your-Ground law a reality in Missouri.
And all that work paid off!
Late in the afternoon on September 14, 2016, after they had an epic meltdown in caucus, Representatives Swan and Lichtenegger buckled under the pressure and agreed to back the caucus in the override vote.
Moments later, all 116 members of the Republican caucus voted to override the veto! And a few hours later, the Senate did the same thing, with 24 of 24 Senate Republicans voting to override the veto on Senate Bill 656!
The override of this veto meant that Missourians would be able to enjoy:
>>> Constitutional Carry Law
>>> Stand-Your-Ground Law
>>> Lifetime Concealed Carry Permits
>>> Enhanced Castle Doctrine Protections
And yes, we made sure that Senator Munzlinger’s effort to cap the concealed carry permit fees passed into law, too. 😊
Michael Bloomberg spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to stop us, using a digital and newspaper ad spree that blanketed the state.
Virtually every media outlet in Missouri tried to stop us.
The radical leftists in the House and Senate tried to stop us.
And weak-kneed moderates, wolves in sheep’s clothing, did their best to stop us, too.
Aaron Dorr and Representative Eric Burlison, doing a Facebook live update for the members of the Missouri Firearms Coalition, moments after the legislature successfully overrode Governor Nixon’s veto of S.B. 656 – Constitutional Carry legislation.
But they all failed, thanks to an incredible amount of grassroots pressure that the members of the Missouri Firearms Coalition applied on lawmakers, urged on by a world class mobilization effort that the Dorr Brothers assembled, involving direct mail, email, digital ads, and more!
And, of course, thanks to the steady hand of Representative Eric Burlison, who never gave up on this effort.
The veto override session was Burlison’s last day in the House of Representatives, having been term-limited out.
Two years later, Burlison won election to the Missouri Senate, where he and the Dorr Brothers continue to fight for the members of the Missouri Firearms Coalition to this day.