“You can’t just get an order against somebody that effectively disarms them without allowing them to offer a case,” Charles Heller of the Citizens Defense League told me Friday. “If you have an order to remove firearms before someone has had a chance to go before a court, it’s openly a failure of due process.”

By the end of the negotiation, the league had won amendments that eliminated the ex-parte hearings, requiring instead that a respondent be given a chance to make an argument before an order seizing his guns was issued. Even with those changes, the bill didn’t go anywhere.

This year, the governor is reintroducing his school-safety plan with some changes. Among them, Ducey spokesman Patrick Ptak told me, the STOP-order legislation will guarantee a right to an appearance by the respondent, eliminating ex-parte hearings from the get-go.

In my view, it’s an OK effort, tailored to win the votes of Republicans who likely will oppose the bill in the end anyway. But the governor could go a stronger direction and maybe win more votes — from Democrats.