Dueling Gun Bills

“Vermont Carry” vs. “Shall Issue” In Iowa

Once again this year, competing bills seeking to reform Iowa’s iniquitous weapons carry laws have been introduced. This year however, this seems to be causing a growing fissure in the gun rights community.

One bill, House File 596/Senate File 473, the “Vermont Carry” bill, is being touted as the “REAL Right-to-Carry Bill.” This bill is being pushed by the group Iowa Gun Owners (IGO) and was sponsored in the House by Rep. Sorenson (R-74) and in the State Senate by Sen. Hartsuch (R-41). It currently has 24 co-sponsors in the House and 9 in the Senate.

According to IGO, HF596/SF473 would “[restore] the 2nd Amendment in Iowa by eliminating mandatory government training, paying fees, and the whole concept of having to beg permission to exercise a Constitutional right.” The bill “would allow any Iowan, who is not a felon or otherwise barred by law from owning weapons, to carry a weapon for self-defense, concealed or openly, WITHOUT having to get government permission.” [Emphasis in original.] This is often called “Vermont Carry” because the only two states that allow it are Vermont and (more recently) Alaska. Many other western states, however, allow citizens to carry openly without a permit, while requiring a permit to carry concealed.

The other bill, which has not had been assigned bill numbers yet, is a “shall issue” law written by the NRA, and supported by the pro-gun groups Iowa Carry (IC) [of which I'm a dues-paying member], Iowa Sportsmen's Federation, and the Iowa State Rifle & Pistol Association. Current Iowa law allows local sheriff’s total discretion on whether or not to issue weapons permits to qualified applicants. The current law says that sheriffs “may issue” permits, so it is often called a “may issue” law. This has essentially left Iowa with 99 policies on issuing weapons permits, one for each county. The new NRA bill would address the five key criteria identified as essential by Iowa Carry: “Shall Issue,” standardized training, reciprocity (with other states), an appeals process for permit denials, and privacy of records.

Although Iowa Carry had ostensibly partnered with the NRA on this bill, once NRA had assured IC that it’s five points would be addressed, IC appears to have then been relegated to the role of a father-to-be from the 1950’s, waiting nervously in the hospital lobby to see what the so-called “professionals” delivered. Input from us Iowa “local yokels” seemed to be pretty minimal (from my limited vantage point).

Surprisingly to some, the NRA bill has come under heavy fire from fellow guns rights activists, most notably IGO. While IGO’s disparagement might be casually dismissed as merely trying to push their own bill to the top of the heap, the criticism is coming from many quarters. Jeff Knox at The Firearms Coalition has been panning the NRA’s bill, as has Gun Owners of America.

Another voice joining the chorus is long-time gun activist Ed Dolan, currently the “Right to Keep and Bear Arms” Project Leader for the Iowa Campaign for Liberty (C4L). Dolan has fought in the trenches for the Second Amendment here in Iowa for a good many years, including working for the NRA as an “election volunteer coordinator.” His is an opinion I respect. In a recent email on behalf of C4L, Dolan outlines problems with the NRA bill and endorses the IGO Vermont Carry bill.

One problem Dolan identifies with the NRA bill (and probably with any arms licensing regime) is that “it ignores constitutional principles by accepting the State’s power to reduce our God-given constitutional rights to fee-based, permitted privileges.” Indeed it’s hard to say that one has a “right” to keep and bear arms if one has to ask for government permission and pay to exercise it.

Dolan also identifies three nuts-and-bolts problems with the NRA bill, which he puts under the category of “Solutions in Search of a Problem.” Firstly, according to Dolan, the bill “[a]dds unnecessary federal restrictions to Iowa’s purchase and permitting process, barring thousands of peaceable Iowans from protecting their families.” From what I understand, the NRA bill would basically codify the dreaded federal Lautenberg Amendment into Iowa law. If we ever manage to get it repealed at one level, it would then still exist at the other.

Secondly, Dolan says the bill “[i]nvents a new victimless crime of being ‘under the influence’ (undefined) while carrying. I call it the ‘Two beers, too bad’ law. You lose your gun rights forever without ever ‘skinning that smokewagon!’” While no one advocates drinking while armed, “under the influence of alcohol” would be open for wide interpretation by anti-gun police and prosecutors. Would a gulp of wine at communion or a gargle of Scope put you “under the influence?” We just don’t know. Let me also add: “Skinning your smoke wagon” sounds painful!

Thirdly, the NRA bill “[r]aises the [permit to carry] age from 18 to 21 years of age. Again, why?” It would be pretty hard to explain to an 18 to 20 year old Iowa Guardsman why he can be trusted to carry a Javelin antitank missile in Afghanistan but not a six-shooter at home, but civilians only three years older than himself can.

If Iowa gun owners learned anything last legislative season (when a mediocre gun bill was amended into an atrocious gun bill), these “compromises” that the NRA has built into the bill will be treated as a floor, not a ceiling, by anti-gun legislators. You would think the NRA would make their bill as clean and tight as possible to start out; but they didn’t. When it emerges from the legislative sausage press it will be even worse.

This is not to say the shall issue bill is entirely without merit. It would bring Iowa’s carry laws in line with the Iowa Constitution’s mandate that laws have a “uniform operation” across the state. That is important. And it would redress those five points sought by Iowa Carry.

Iowa Carry, for its part, doesn’t oppose IGO’s Vermont Carry bill, it just doesn’t think it’s politically doable right now. "We've had a hard enough time going from may issue to shall issue," said Sean McClanahan, president of IC. "It's just not politically feasible." He adds: "We lost rights a little at a time. We have to take them back little by little."

There is truth to those words. People who forgo “better” (shall issue) in hopes of “best” (Vermont Carry), often end up with neither. Unfortunately, in this case I have serious doubts that the “better” option is really better.

At the risk of alienating some of my friends at Iowa Carry, I’ll be pushing my representatives to support the Vermont Carry bill (HF596/SF473) and not the NRA bill. Second Amendment purists might not be able to win the battle for Vermont Carry in Iowa, but it’s a good hill to die on.

Everclear and Present Danger

In its never-ending quest to keep its citizens safe from their own actions, by treating them all like idiot children, the state of Iowa is investigating whether to ban or severely regulate the sale of Everclear, a highly concentrated alcohol (HCA) beverage. In other states Everclear is available up to 95% alcohol (190 proof), but last year Iowa officials limited Everclear sold in this state to 75.5% alcohol (151 proof).

The Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Commission recently held a meeting at Drake University to hear public opinion on the topic. In November 2009 a Drake student was rushed to the hospital for alcohol poisoning after consuming copious amounts of Everclear, creating the massive debate about the drink in Iowa. Since one young college punk got sick on the stuff, obviously the state needs to make new regulations to restrict the freedom of three million other Iowans. After all, it wasn't that kid's fault, the other kids "made" him do it.

Holding its hearing at any college campus, much less one recently rocked by the near-death of one of its students, is probably not the best place to hear dispassionate and well-reasoned arguments calling for government restraint. The Commission probably doesn't want to hear those anyway.

If you would like the Commission to hear some, you can email comments on the topic to dusold@iowaabd and read public comments for and against increased regulation of HCA's at the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Commission's website.

"Free Market Makes a Lot of Sense" Redux

In November I posted an excerpt and a link to a guest column I had in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Since I'm not sure how long the Gazette will maintain that link on their website, I present the original unedited version of that article below:

By now it’s well-known that the Obama Administration’s “Manufacturing Czar” Ron Bloom raised a few eyebrows when he stated that “the free market is nonsense.” If the waning months of the Bush Administration are any indication, the leaders of both major parties now basically share this philosophy. That’s a pity.

Our “nonsensical” free (though increasingly regulated) market has given America one of the highest standards of living in the world. Even our poor people could have it much worse. According to the Heritage Foundation, of poor households in the United States: 46% own their own homes, 76% have air conditioning, nearly 75% own a vehicle (30% own two), 97% own a color television, 62% have cable or satellite television. 89% of poor families say they have enough to eat, while only 2% say they "often" do not have enough to eat. Imperfect, but not bad.

If we don’t have a free market economy, then we have a command economy wherein government regulators control wages, prices and production rates. (Sure, it’s a sliding scale between the two, but an administration that views one end as “nonsense” will obviously only let us slide one way.)

When I was young, the Soviet Union was the ultimate embodiment of a command economy. I spent some time there in the summer of 1991 as a “student ambassador.” A group of American students and I toured the country, seeing Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and the Estonian countryside. We stayed with some nice Russian families. Although my three weeks there certainly doesn’t make me an expert on all things Soviet, it was an eye-opening trip for a sixteen year old Iowa farm boy nonetheless.

I saw the blocks-long lines of people waiting for bread and other necessities. I toured GUM department store in Moscow. A great Soviet achievement, we were told it was the largest department store in the world. It’s shelves were bare.

Somewhere I got a small toy Soviet army tank. The price was stamped right into the steel bottom of it at the time of manufacture. (I forget what the price was. Let’s say two rubles.) That price, as well as the number to be produced, presumably, had been set by some panel of government planners months before the toy tank rolled off the production line.

What would the price have been if the toy tank had become the “must-have” toy for Russian kids, with demand quickly outstripping production? Two rubles, get in line! What would the price have been if it was sold in a store on the far side of Siberia, burning up 4,000 miles worth of fuel resources to get there? Two rubles. And if Russian kids hated the new toy and would rather play with a broken piece of cobblestone? Then they would gather dust on store shelves, available for the low, low price of… two rubles.

It’s easy to see that a market system based upon the logical decisions of bureaucrats a month or a week ago quickly becomes a system based upon no logic at all. This is the “sensible” system that the Manufacturing Czar and, by extension, his boss President Obama advocate?

Although I hope that we don’t follow the Soviet economic model, there’s at least one thing that the Soviets got right. They got rid of their czars.

The Once and Future Foreign Policy

Most of us who grew up in the 20th century probably assume that the twin pillars of our foreign policy, dollar diplomacy and big stick diplomacy, are America’s traditional methods of international relations. Not so. At her founding, and for a good many years afterward, America maintained a policy that (in the technical parlance of international diplomacy) was called “minding our own damned business.”

In President Washington’s farewell address he reminded Americans, “The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” In his inaugural address, with his usual eloquence, President Thomas Jefferson advised that America should seek "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."

Did this mean America was afraid to wield a “big stick” when needed? Not at all. The Barbary Wars (1801-1805, 1815) and the War of 1812 demonstrate that when America had clear and immediate threats to it’s people or tangible interests it would defend them.

America retained this policy of non-interventionism roughly until the Spanish-American War (1898). Someday, when the federal government can no longer afford to maintain a global empire because of the weight of its own indebtedness, this may again become the de facto foreign policy.

The best articulation of traditional American non-interventionism is John Quincy Adams’ Independence Day speech to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1821, when Adams was serving as U.S. Secretary of State. His speech explains this premise passionately and poetically. Here it is:

John Quincy Adams on U.S. Foreign Policy (July 4, 1821)

And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?

Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.

She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.

She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.

She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.

She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.

The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....

She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....

[America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

10th Amendment Revival In 2010?

Could 2010 bring a resurgence in the importance of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, after it spent most of the 20th century in relative obscurity? At least one group that studies Constitutional governance thinks so.

According to Michael Boldin, founder of the Tenth Amendment Center,a Los Angeles-based think tank, "With people looking to resist D.C. through state laws on everything from national health care to medical marijuana, the 10th Amendment appears ready to be front and center in the national debate once again this year."

The Tenth Amendment states, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." It is an encapsulation of the principle of federalism, reserving much sovereignty for states and individuals.

"Already, over a dozen states are considering laws or state constitutional amendments that would effectively ban, or nullify, any proposed national health care plan in their state, and we expect that number to reach at least twenty in 2010," said Boldin. "In conjunction with 20+ states that have already said 'No' to the Bush-era Real ID act, another dozen or more considering state laws to nullify federal gun laws, and the steady growth of states refusing to comply with federal marijuana laws, some might consider what we see today to be an unprecedented state-level rebellion to the federal government."

This nonviolent "rebellion" is based upon the traditional (yet long neglected) principal of nullification. By nullifying a federal law, a state declares that law to be null and void within that particular state. "Nullification has been used to stand up for free speech, resist the fugitive slave laws, reduce tariffs and more," explains Boldin. "It's a peaceful and effective way to resist the federal government, and might be our only hope for moving towards the constitution."

In addition to the many state government efforts to proclaim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment or to nullify various federal laws, Tenth Amendment rallies are planned in at least 10 states in January.

With so much activity afoot, 2010 may indeed be the year of the Tenth Amendment.

Related posts:

1. 10 Questions with TAC Founder Michael Boldin
2. The Growing Movement to Nullify Nat'l Health Care
3. The Great Debate, Part 1: The General Welfare Clause
4. The Great Debate, Part 2: The Commerce Clause
5. The Great Debate, Part 3: What Now?