The Latest: Kansas City council approves 2 gun ordinances

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The Latest on gun violence in Missouri (all times local):

Kansas City leaders have approved two ordinances aimed at keeping firearms out of the hands of minors.

The Kansas City Star reports that one ordinance approved Thursday draws on federal law to make it a local offense for minors to have handguns. The other, citing state law, prohibits adults from recklessly giving minors guns without parental permission.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas says the idea behind the ordinances is to give police tools to seize firearms from minors. Lucas’ general counsel, Jane Pansing Brown, says there is a federal law barring minors from possessing handguns, but she said it’s rarely enforced by federal prosecutors.

Councilman Brandon Ellington abstained from the vote. He argued that the measures unnecessarily duplicated existing state and federal law and that most homicides don’t involve minors.

____

10:15 a.m.

A man has been charged with killing a 15-year-old in St. Louis in the first case filed in a string of child homicides in the city.

Fifty-four-year-old Joseph Renick is jailed on $500,000 bond after he was charged Thursday with first-degree murder, armed criminal action and unlawful possession of a firearm in the death of Sentonio Cox. No attorney is listed for him in online court records.

Sentenio is the latest of at least 13 children killed by gunfire in St. Louis this year. A St. Louis police detective wrote in the probable cause statement that the boy was backing away from Renick with his hands raised Sunday morning when Renick shot him in the head.

The statement provided no other information about what led up to the shooting. Susan Ryan, a spokeswoman for St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, said she couldn’t comment beyond what is in the document.