AR-15 style rifles are displayed for sale at Firearms Unknown, a gun store in Oceanside, California, US, April 12, 2021. (Reuters photo )

A Republican lawmaker in Missouri is pushing a gun bill that would make murder legal, prosecutors say.

The bill would alter self-defense laws and establish that any use of physical or deadly force would be presumed to be self-defense.

The bill sponsored by Republican state Sen. Eric Burlison has prompted controversy and sharp criticism from opponents who warn that it could cause dangerous, unintended consequences for public safety and hinder law enforcement’s ability to prosecute violent criminals.

Currently, under the state law, citizens are allowed to use physical force on another person to protect themselves, however, the person bears the legal burden to prove he or she reasonably believed physical or deadly force was necessary to protect him or herself or a third person.

The proposed Senate Bill 666 would shift that burden of proof onto prosecutors, who would now need to present clear and convincing evidence during a pretrial hearing to show the defendant was acting on motives other than self-defense before charges can be pressed.

The bill also states that a person who uses, or threatens to use, force in self-defense is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force unless that force was used against a law-enforcement officer on duty.

The initiative has drawn a sharp rebuke from prosecutors, civil rights groups and law-enforcement agencies and organizations including the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, the Missouri Sheriffs United, the Missouri Fraternal Order of Police and the St. Louis Police Officers Association, among others.

Nimrod Chapel Jr., president of the Missouri NAACP, said the bill would essentially allow anyone to go penalty-free for murder.

It turns everything that we know about the rule of law as related to murder on its head, he said in an interview Wednesday, adding that the presumption that anybody who shoots a person did it in self-defense would create a culture of death.

Chapel said the existing self-defense doctrine is being applied inequitably to justify and prevent fair prosecution of crimes against people of color in rural areas of the state.

He also warned that the new initiative could further hinder access to criminal justice and affect all Missourians.

St. Charles County Prosecuting Attorney Timothy Lohmar said the initiative changes the nature of self-defense claims and establishes that anybody who committed assault or murder and claims they were acting in self-defense is presumably correct and their actions were legal.

It would mean that practically in every murder case where you don’t have a witness, all the defendant has to say is that he or she was acting in self-defense to get away with it, he said. It also means you are going to have a lot of murderers walking free if this becomes law.

Lohmar like dozens of other prosecutors, law enforcement officers and agencies condemned the initiative they have described as the Make Murder Legal Act.