Iowa House committee approves stand-your-ground legislation

DES MOINES — 'For freedom's sake,' according to Rep. Matt Windschitl, Iowa lawmakers should approve a sweeping changes to Iowa's gun regulations, including stand-your-ground legislation that would allow Iowans to use deadly force to protect lives and property.

The House Judiciary Committee followed his lead Wednesday night, approving House Study Bill 133, on a party-line vote 13-7 to send the bill to the full House.

Windschitl doesn't know when it will be debated, but hopes to send the bill to the Senate in time to meet the March 31 deadline for House bills to be reported out of a Senate committee.

HSB 133 was scaled back with an amendment Windschitl said addressed concerns of law enforcement, firearms groups and others. Many of the changes reinstate current law, which prohibits political subdivisions of the state from enacting prohibitions on carrying a weapon. However, language was added to put the burden on an individual who believes they have been adversely affected by a weapons ban on a college or university campus, at their public library or community hospital to seek relief in court. Private businesses would not be prevented from banning weapons.

The amendment also prohibited possession of short-barreled rifles and shotguns in violation of federal law and requires both permits to carry and permits to acquire a weapon.

In the end, however, it was the bill's stand-your-ground provisions that drew the most concern.

Under current law, said Rep. Mary Wolfe, D-Clinton, a criminal defense attorney, a person can stand their ground to protect themselves or others or property. They have no duty to retreat and may use reasonable force 'unless they are 100 percent sure they can retreat without danger to themselves or others,' she said.

'For all intents and purposes, we have stand-your-ground. That's fine,' Wolfe said. She pointed out that many of the provisions of the bill have been approved in the past by the House with bipartisan support.

'I have supported all of those proposals,' she said, but she couldn't support HSB 133 because of the stand-your-ground provisions.

Under current law, Wolfe said, it's clear that if it is only property that is in danger 'you are not authorized to use deadly force because in Iowa we do not feel a car, a bicycle, or any piece of property is worth a person's life.'

That would change under the bill. Deadly force could be used to prevent a burglary — someone breaking into a garage or storage shed, for example, she said.

That 'indisputably makes Iowa a more dangerous place to live,' Wolfe said.

Windschitl countered that goes to fear of the unknown. He recalled that when the Legislature approved shall-issue legislation requiring sheriffs to issue gun permits there were warning 'there would be blood in the street, there would be vigilante justice, that we were going to turn Iowa into wild, Wild West.'

Now, with 275,000 Iowans with carry permits, he's not aware of a 'grievous case out there where someone was carrying a weapon has misbehaved so terribly that we have come close to categorizing it as blood in the street.'

'Iowans have shown they are reasonable, responsible people,' he said, 'and this merely provides the protection they need, they deserve.'

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