As students marched out of classrooms across the nation to protest gun violence, Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer signed a bill that prohibits the arming of domestic abusers.
Among other things, the bill would make gun possession illegal for someone who has been convicted of a misdemeanor for domestic violence within the last five years.
The same ban would apply to fugitives, undocumented immigrants and someone with a restraining order against them for threatening an intimate partner or their child.
The bill generated a little controversy in the Senate when it was amended so that it would now be legal to possess throwing stars unless someone intends to use them unlawfully against another person.
Senators argued that under current law someone could get in trouble for carrying something fashioned out of metal that looks like a throwing star but isn’t.
The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and 113-6 in the House.
Colyer announced the bill signing on the same day thousands of students walked out of classrooms on the anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School to push for tighter gun-control laws.
In other action, Colyer signed Senate bill 263, which creates a program to research the use of industrial hemp. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and 123-1 in the House.
Colyer has now signed 62 bills this session, many of them not very controversial with the school finance bill as a notable exception.
