Category: right to carry

When Good Bills Go Bad

HF 193’s fall from grace and it’s hoped redemption.

German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck said, “There are two things you don’t want to see being made—sausage and legislation.” Watching the political tug-of-war going on in the Iowa legislature right now over Iowa’s concealed carry permit system, I can see what he meant. Sausage-making usually renders a usable product, however, while legislating might not.
Such is the fate of House File 193, a bill partially reforming Iowa’s weapons permit process. About two weeks ago I included HF193 in my “Funnel Week” report as one of the “good bills” to have survived. How quickly things change.
I reported at that time: “HF 193 would improve the licensing regime in several ways. First, if a sheriff denies a permit he has to give the applicant a written reason why it was denied. Secondly, a denial can be appealed to the Iowa commissioner of public safety (and then to a judge, if needed). Thirdly, it would standardize training requirements statewide. Fourthly, it would grant reciprocity, recognizing weapons permits from other states. Lastly, it would grant immunity to the issuing sheriff or commissioner of public safety for any unlikely harm done by a permit holder.”
That was how the bill read as it was originally introduced by pro-Second Amendment legislator Clel Baudler. However, it emerged from the Iowa House’s Public Safety Committee “sausage factory” much different than it went in. It even came out sporting a new name: HF 746.
HF 746 still leaves discretion on issuing permits to the county sheriff, meaning Iowa will retain its 99 different policies on issuance requirements. It would keep the appeals process from HF 193, but permit denials would be upheld so long as they were “uniformly applied to all nonprofessional permits issued pursuant to standards published by the sheriff[.]”
In other words, all that Iowa’s many anti-Second Amendment sheriffs would have to do is post a list of their “standards” for issuing permits, perhaps requiring applicants be blue-eyed Eskimo amputees who are native-speakers of Portuguese. (It doesn’t say how these standards would be disseminated. Presumably, an 8.5” X 11” photocopy hung in the sheriff’s personal restroom would suffice.) So long as these standards were “uniformly applied” to all applicants, the sheriff doesn’t even need to give you a written reason for the denial and the appeals process would be meaningless.
The new bill was so bad that Gun Owners of America (GOA) said it would consider a legislator’s vote for HF 746 as an “anti-gun” vote. According to GOA, the bill would also:

  • Permanently ban you from getting a permit if you have been convicted of a simple misdemeanor assault or harassment charge (charges that can include such things as “pushing and shoving” cases);
  • Raise the permit age from 18 to 21;
  • Remove some of the confidentiality restrictions on psychiatric records(which means that military veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder could be unduly affected by [HF 746]);
  • Require that an abused spouse attempting to get a permit to protect herself from her abusing husband pass a marksmanship test;
  • Specify that the Lautenberg amendment be strictly enforced, even though strict enforcement of the Lautenberg amendment in other jurisdictions has interpreted its language to reach parents who spank their kids, wives who spit at their husbands, and even spouses who inflict “emotional abuse.”

Since anti-Second Amendment legislators trashed Baudler’s original bill, a few pro-Second Amendment legislators decided to try to return the favor. Representative Kent Sorenson (who had earlier seen his “Vermont Carry” bill go down in flames) and several others, introduced three new amendments to HF 746.
Again according to GOA, these amendments (labeled H 1184, H 1185, and H 1186) would “reaffirm[…] your right to carry a firearm without the gracious permission of the government” (Sorenson’s Vermont Carry), and include “‘Castle doctrine’ language which would allow you to defend yourself, your family, and others without retreating,” and “[l]anguage to move Iowa toward a ‘shall issue’ state in which your concealed carry permit could not be withheld for arbitrary reasons[.]”
The pro-Second Amendment group Iowa Carry reports that Speaker of the House Pat Murphy has stated that he will not allow HF 746 to come to a vote on the house floor with these amendments attached. Iowa Carry encourages concerned gun owners to contact Representative Murphy and tell him to allow a vote on HF 746 WITH the amendments H 1184, H 1185, and H 1186. (Remember, without the amendments this is a bad, bad bill. With the amendments, it’s okay.)
That’s where concealed carry reform in Iowa stands at the moment.

"Shall Issue" In Iowa?

While the National Rifle Association dozes quietly on the sidelines (no doubt dreaming of new fundraising appeals), five separate “shall issue” concealed weapons bills have been introduced in the Iowa General Assembly. This fact alone shows that there is growing support for fixing Iowa’s concealed carry law.

Concealed carry laws simply allow that citizens who have passed criminal background checks and firearms training courses can be issued a permit to carry a firearm concealed on their person. Thirty-six states have “shall issue” laws which declare that the issuing authority must issue a permit to qualified applicants. Iowa currently has what is called a “may issue” law. The decision whether or not to issue permits to qualified applicants (or at all) is left to each individual county sheriff. This means that there are 99 separate policies setting standards for proper training and issuance of permits in Iowa, although the permits themselves are valid statewide. [The Iowa map to the upper right shows the relative ease of getting a permit by county, with green being the easiest, yellow medium, and red the hardest. Map courtesy of IowaCarry.org ]
Why would Iowa, or any state, want private individuals to be able to carry guns? Concealed carry laws are partially responsible for the massive declines in crime rates that we’ve seen in America. States which passed concealed carry laws reduced their murder rate by 8.5%, rape by 5%, aggravated assault by 7% and robbery by 3%. Since 1991, 23 states have adopted some form of concealed carry law, the number of privately-owned guns has risen by almost 70 million, while violent crime has declined 38%. Every year, about 500,000 people defend themselves with a firearm while away from their home. [U.S. map to the left from NRA-ILA.]

Of the five bills introduced in the Iowa legislature, three do not fix all the problems of the current system. Some appear to be “shall issue” measures, but leave out important elements such as an appeals process or standardized statewide training requirements. Leaving training standards to local sheriffs allows anti-gun sheriffs to obstruct issuing permits by making the standards impossible to meet. The two best bills are HF 559 and HF 596.

HF 559 is the bill being championed by the pro-gun group Iowa Carry. This bill meets the four requirements that Iowa Carry has fought for: It states that the sheriff “shall issue” to qualified applicants, it standardizes training statewide, it allows for “reciprocity” (recognizing permits from other states), and although it allows sheriffs to deny permits for specified reasons, it allows for an appeals process for applicants who feel they were wrongly denied.

This bill is currently stuck in a three-man subcommittee, the chair of which has a reputation as being the ax man for bills that the Democrat majority wants to disappear. When asked about HF 559, another member of the subcommittee states that he is “[not] in favor of a bunch of idiots running around shooting each other.” The last representative on the committee, Clel Baudler, while a stalwart supporter of the Second Amendment, is the author of one of the other concealed carry bills (HF 193) and therefore might not go to the mat for this one.

HF 596 is a much more sweeping reform of Iowa‘s permit system (and therefore much less likely to pass). According to Gun Owners of America, which supports it, the bill would: Allow law-abiding citizens to carry firearms concealed or openly on their hip, without a permit. This is often called “Vermont Carry” after one of the two states that use this policy. (The other, more recent, one is Alaska.) It would allow people to be issued a permit, if they wished to carry in other states that recognize such. Moving beyond right-to-carry issues, this bill would eliminate Iowa’s requirement to get a special permit just to purchase a handgun. This requirement is redundant now that a federal law mandates that all commercial gun sales require a criminal background check.

Although it is good, HF 596 has only slightly better odds of passage than a resolution declaring that hog farmers and the Iowa Hawkeyes suck.

Of the five bills, only Baudler’s HF 193 (SF 258 in the Senate) seems to be going anywhere. This bill is a definite improvement as it would standardize training requirements statewide, grant reciprocity to other states and would establish an appeals process for denied applicants. However, it can’t be considered a true “shall issue” bill since it would still leave issuance criteria solely to the county sheriff.

With five bills floating around the statehouse, there’s a chance that at least one can pass and maybe modestly improve Iowa’s confused weapons permit system. Then again, maybe not.