Missouri Republicans slam revenue department, say it's feeding feds data on gun owners

By Michael Doudna, Wes Duplantier and Luke Lyddon

(MDN News) -- Missouri's Department of Revenue found itself under fire from Republicans who say drivers' license offices have been gathering data on the state's gun owners and illegally feeding that information into a federal security database.

Lawmakers and the state's lieutenant governor all said the license offices have been installing new equipment that scans information from concealed carry permits and drivers' licenses and then transmits that information to third-party companies who then forward it to the federal Department of Homeland Security.

That practice, they all say, is in direct violation of a Missouri state law that makes a person's concealed-carry status a part of private personal information.

The first volleys in the controversy sounded March 4 when Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder held a rare press conference to throw his support behind a lawsuit filed in Stoddard County that seeks to stop the data collection. The lawsuit alleges that a man there was denied a concealed-carry endorsement on his driver's license when he refused to allow staff at the local license office to scan documents related to his permit into their database.

On Wednesday, March 6, state Rep. Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, filed legislation to explicitly bar the Department of Revenue from scanning and transmitting the information. House Speaker Tim Jones said he plans on "fast-tracking" the measure, assigning it to committee within the next week.

Rep. Casey Guernsey, R-Bethany, and Rep. Paul Curtman, R-Pacific, piled on, saying the actions of the license offices support a federal gun control agenda being pushed by the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.

"Being able to store all of us in a national database, I think it is an issue of deeply intrusive government going way too far," said Curtman.

It is still unclear whether the information gathering is happening as Republicans say it is and to what extent. Multiple phone messages left for the revenue department, which oversees the license offices, were unreturned as of late Thursday.

Cell phone users win a legislative victory

Cell phone users would have a new tool against telemarketers under a measure the legislature sent the governor Tuesday, May 15.

The bill would allow cell phone numbers to be included in the "no-call" list maintained by the state attorney general.

With some exceptions, including political calls, telemarketers are prohibited from calling numbers on the no-call list unless there is a pre-existing business relationship with the phone subscriber.

The measure passed by the legislature also would expand the restrictions on telemarketers to include text messaging and faxes.

Business phone lines, however, would continue to be excluded from the restrictions.

Ironically, the bill's sponsor said he had not been subjected to a telemarketing call on his cell phone until just about two hours after his bill had cleared the legislature.

"It demonstrates that this is becoming more and more prevalent," said Rep. Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff. "The telemarketers are becoming more and more aggressive about looking for cell phone numbers and putting them into their databases."

Richardson said the attorney general's office was getting hundreds of complaints per week concerning telemarketing calls to cell phones.

Richardson's bill cleared the legislature without a single dissenting vote in either the House or Senate.

Previous efforts to expand the no-call law had encountered legislative resistance for including political robocalls.

Critics of those efforts argued restricting calls for political campaigns violated the U.S. Constitution's right of free speech.