Iowa lawmakers have security on their mind

DES MOINES – Security was on the minds of elected officials – state and federal – at the state Capitol Monday in the wake of a weekend shooting in Tucson, Ariz., that left six people dead and 14 injured – including U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz.

“It's just tragic. It hit us all,” said U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, a former state senator who was in Des Moines to welcome a new crop of Republican legislators to the Statehouse. “It's a shock to me; it's a shock to all of us.”

Also attending opening-day ceremonies for Iowa 84th General Assembly was U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, D-Des Moines, also a former state senator and presiding officer who told the assemblage that the attempted assassination of Giffords was emblematic that Americans and their elected officials are living in a “challenging time.”

Another federal elected official, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, who was present in the Iowa House where he formerly served to watch his grandson, Pat, get sworn in for a new term, expressed dismay over last weekend's violent attack on Giffords and those around her. But neither he nor King supported added security at the nation's capitol and they did not expect to beef up security for their own town hall meetings.

“I've had a number of death threats on my life, they're intermittent,” King told reporters. “But I'm just going to go forward and do my job. I like people and I don't want to be isolated from people. So, if it means I have to always have a security detail, I'm probably going to be the guy who's going to figure out how to escape my security detail and talk to real people.”

King said there have been preliminary discussions about precautions at the U.S. Capitol, but he said the building is “pretty secure.”

Over the years, state lawmakers have installed metal detectors and implemented other security measures at the state Capitol. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, said the procedures and safety measures are being revisited in the wake of the Arizona tragedy, but no changes currently are contemplated.

“We are reviewing that. We are having some discussions about that,” he said. “At this point I do not contemplate it. We have a good system for keeping weapons out of this building so at this point I don't know if I have any specific recommendations but we are certainly studying that.”

Boswell, a helicopter pilot during the Vietnam war, said he had faced enemy fire during his military service but he did not want “to face an enemy here in our own country' nor did he want to see Americans' civil liberties sacrificed in the wake of the latest gun violence.

During a brief Senate speech, Boswell asked for prayers for the Arizona shooting victims and prayers that “we maintain our liberties in this country and that we stop the nonsense that seems to have caught on under the disguise of politics. Let's quit. Let's stop it.”

King cautioned against over-reacting to an incident that was “an assassination attempt on an individual by a deranged individual” that he said represented the first assault on a member of Congress “inside the continental United States” since 1954. The northwest Iowa Republican also cautioned against people trying to capitalize on the tragedy for political purposes.

“I knew within minutes of this happening that that would start,” he said. “I think it's completely inappropriate to do this. I think we should take a step back and get a good look at what has happened and it'll take a week or two for it to settle in before there's really any kind of legitimate approach that can be discussed.”