Guns could become more common sight in public across state

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear ... when people could drink shots of whiskey in a saloon while packing a shooting iron for all to see.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. Saturday, when Eastern Iowa bars are filled with revelers welcoming 2011, new rules for the issuance of permits to carry weapons become law, in effect allowing licensed Iowa handgun carriers to enjoy the same Wild West freedom that prevailed in the Lone Ranger's day

“The people of Iowa are not used to seeing this sort of thing,” said Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, an opponent of several provisions of the new law that changes Iowa from a “may issue” to a “shall issue” state.

Another opponent of those same provisions, Linn County Sheriff

Brian Gardner, said state law has always allowed licensed handgun carriers to do so openly or concealed. What has changed, he said, is that the new law has eliminated the discretion of county sheriffs, who almost uniformly required license holders in their counties to conceal their weapons.

Openly carrying guns in public places runs counter to the sensibilities of many Iowans, whose views on publicly displayed weapons have been shaped by Columbine and other subsequent mass slayings, Pulkrabek said.

Gardner, Pulkrabek and other Eastern Iowa sheriffs also object to gun permit holders' new freedom to drink alcohol while openly carrying a gun.

The permit to carry becomes invalid if the drinker's blood alcohol level crosses the 0.08 percent Iowa intoxication threshold, but sheriffs complain that the lack of an implied consent provision hampers enforcement.

The open carrying of handguns, while legal, will be a fairly rare occurrence, said Sean McClanahan, president of the Iowa Firearms Coalition, the group that lobbied for the changes.

“There is a tactical advantage to carrying concealed” that most gun owners will want to preserve, he said.

Nor, he said, is there anything inherently wrong with licensed gun carriers drinking alcohol in public.

Iowans need to understand that “a properly holstered firearm is not a threat,” said McClanahan, of West Des Moines.

Jones County Sheriff Mark Denniston said he anticipates a smooth transition to the new law.

“I really don't worry much about the permit holders. They are not the ones causing the problems,” he said.

As much as Eastern Iowa sheriffs dislike the open-carry and alcohol-consumption freedoms - “guns and alcohol don't mix,” said Buchanan County Sheriff Bill Wolfgram - Gardner and Pulkrabek say their chief objection to the new law is that sheriffs can no longer prescribe training to get a carry permit.

While Linn, Johnson and most other Iowa counties required applicants to demonstrate competency on the firing range, the new state law requires no range qualification at all.

The Iowa Firearms Coalition “strongly recommends that everyone get as much training as they can afford,” but range qualification should be voluntary rather than mandatory, McClanahan said.

“We believe training is not required to exercise an enumerated right,” he said.

The law's broadening of the circumstances in which licensed Iowans can carry guns has prompted some Iowa county and city officials to explore measures to limit weapons in courthouses, city halls and other public facilities.

The supervisors in Buchanan and Washington counties, for example, have begun the process of prohibiting weapons in most county facilities.

A Dec. 29 letter from the Iowa Attorney General's Office to the county attorneys in all 99 counties states that the new law “would not bar a city or county from regulating firearms on the city or county's own property.”

McClanahan said he believes the shall-issue nature of the new law will result in “a big rush of applicants in counties where people could not easily get permits.”

Pulkrabek said his office has seen an “enormous increase” in handgun license applications in December, and “we're expecting an even larger influx after the first of the year.”

Many Johnson County residents had the perception that it was hard to get a handgun license there, even though he has denied few applications in his six years as sheriff, Pulkrabek said.

In Linn County, more than 350 people have applied for permits in the past 30 days. Gardner himself adopted a shall-issue policy after making it a campaign issue in his run for the office two years ago. Last year, his office approved 1,209 non-professional permits, compared with 439 in the last year Don Zeller was sheriff.