Following the BFIA rant, see the Des Moines Register's editorial below. One of the points they make that we agree with is that gun owners aren't the only ones with rights. The rest of us have rights too.  And actually, we're in the majority.

Rights of People Who Don't Want To Be Around Guns

Gun rights, gun rights, gun rights, ad nauseum.  What about the rights of ordinary citizens to not be endangered in public by gun-toters who promise that using the gun is the last thing they want to do? (At least that's what the trainings they are all voluntarily attending are supposed to be teaching).  But if it is the case that they are being trained not to use the gun, why do they want one? What are they so afraid of here in Iowa?  And why are their fears more important than everyone else's?

Proof that any sound byte repeated enough times can take over an otherwise critically-thinking mind, a non-gun-owning, liberal family member recently said to me, well, you can't ban guns because then only the criminals would have them.  It seems obvious that we do not have to worry about erring on the side of too-few guns because we are way at the other end of the continuum. That is to say, no one is talking about or thinking about banning guns.  What is left out when some say they don't want the criminals to be the only ones with guns, is that being in possession of a gun can help turn someone into a criminal who otherwise may not have quite gotten there. Many mass murders/shootings are done by people who are not criminals before they decide to shoot a bunch of people.  They are members of a community, neighbors, college students, teen-agers, somebody's husband, and yes, even somebody's mother. Not necessarily criminals.

We don't know the numbers, but we suspect that the vast majority of new gun-procurers are men, not women, who you would think would have a much greater need of personal protection, considering that women are much more likely to be raped, stalked, assaulted, or to become victims of domestic violence than men are. I saw a photo on the internet of a gun training class somewhere in Iowa.  It was a packed room. There was not a single woman in the group.

What are they planning to do with their new guns? We'll never know because they no longer get asked that question in the permit process. They want one, they can have one. For an astonishingly tiny, token fee, considering all the havoc and mayhem this is likely to create.  And when it happens – when somebody who acquired a gun under this new law who would not have been able to under our previous law, inevitably goes out and hurts someone with it, accidentally or on purpose, will these gun advocates say, well, maybe we'd better rethink this?  Not likely.  They'll say what they always say, guns don't kill people, you know the rest…  

But, how Iowa got here I can't say, (although my first guess after  NRA lobbying efforts would be it has something to do with the fear-producing hate speech of right-wing radio that completely saturates the publicly owned airwaves in our state and overcomes the thinking of otherwise perfectly regular people) but here we are now.  We're no longer “Iowa – A Place to Grow”…  doesn't really seem to fit anymore anyway… “Fields of Opportunities” doesn't really describe us either – and we're not even “Iowa, The Triple P State – Pork, Poker and Prisons” anymore, (a great song about Iowa by one of Iowa's finest musicians, Dave Moore). Let's face it, unless we come to our collective senses, it's going to be “Iowa, The Quadruple-P State:  Pork, Poker, Prisons & Pistols.”

Here's an excerpt from the Des Moines Register editorial. 

Iowa Should Impose Sensible Gun Restraint

In the lore of the Old West, only back shooters and card cheaters carried hidden guns. Decent people carried their weapons openly….What Americans once regarded as a despicable practice now feels like a fad.

But in its rush to let virtually everyone go armed, the Legislature didn't think things through.

Lawmakers should consider whether people have a right to know who around them is carrying a gun….lawmakers focused on gun owners' rights but neglected the rights of property owners and the rights of ordinary citizens to know when they are in the presence of someone who is armed.

It seems obvious that property owners should be able to prohibit weapons being carried onto their property, but the Legislature left it unclear. Lawmakers need to revisit the law to make sure a gun permit doesn't confer the right to carry guns onto private property against the wishes of the owner.

If you walked into a theater and saw someone sitting there with a gun, you might want to choose a different seat….the public should have the choice of whether to associate with people who are armed….If the law doesn't clearly support property owners' rights, that takes choices from Iowans, too.

Lawmakers have work to do fixing the current law. They should ignore other proposals – like one to allow Iowans to shoot alleged attackers “any place they have the legal right to be” or another to prevent local governments from prohibiting guns on public property.

In the famous Heller decision affirming a Second Amendment right to arms, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that the right to carry a gun is not unlimited. Iowa would do well to recognize that right about now.