Tag Archives: iowa firearms coalition

It ain’t real complicated

This isn’t real tough. All freedom hinges on the 2nd Amendment. Lose that and you lose everything. You have to have the pro 2nd Amendment Representative in the Iowa House. You have to have the lobbying group like Iowa Firearms Coalition. You have to have the shooting clubs like Boone Sportsmen’s Club, Ike’s and others. You have to have the gun owners for votes and $10. I read the other day when Iowa went from a ‘may issue’ to a ‘shall issue’ State, carry permit holders went from something like 33,000 to 287,000. A huge increase.

But then you get into these prickly questions. How many gunowners In Iowa are NRA members? How many gunowners have given $10 to IFC? How many gunowners have given $10 to their Iowa House member? With a population a little over 3 million, I hazard to guess there are a minimum of 1.5 million gunowners in Iowa. Everyone likes to benefit from the fruits of the efforts of IFC and the Iowa Legislature, but how many are contributing? Everybody wants to eat the bread, but how many helped plant the wheat? 

If everyone of those 1.5 million gunowners gave $10 to IFC that’s $15 million dollars. If everyone of those 1.5 million gunowners gave $10 to their Iowa House race, that’s $15 million dollars to elect progun people that isn’t normally there ($15 million over 100 House races is $150,000 per race). $15 million would have an effect on a US House race, imagine what it would do in a State House race? But even this moderate intensity fight for rights wouldn’t have to go beyond 7 years. Get that Constitutional Amendment for carry, and you’re largely done.

[11/26/19 update: The State of Virginia is a prime example. Many circumstances can be blamed for why Virginia was lost to the Democrats. Do a search on “China+Virginia+election” and you’ll come up with some interesting results. But the bottom line is as it always is, less than half of eligible voters voted. Media always like to couch it as, “67% of registered voters turned out…”. What that really means is that 33% of registered voters didn’t turnout, and half of the people aren’t registered!”]

 

Iowa Secretary of State blows it

I just found out Iowa was this close to voting on an amendment for Constitutional Carry in 2020. Secretary of State Paul Pate didn’t file the paperwork. Not kidding. Public notice has to be given a certain number of months on a Constitutional Amendment, and Pate didn’t file it. Unbelievable. The implications of this are staggering. If it had passed it would not only have strengthened Iowa’s gun rights, but those of the entire nation by making Iowa the 15th State to enshrine it in a Constitution. That much harder for any future Legislature to tamper with it.

And Pate chucked all that out the window. The Iowa House had 6 seats flip to Democrats in 2018, God knows what will happen in 2020. The soonest we could vote on it now is 2022. If control of the Iowa House changes by then, we may never see that chance again (Seals and Crofts reference). My theory still holds, even more so. All sweat and money needs to be devoted to the Iowa House races. And there is one new caveat. Iowa gun owners need to donate to IFC and their Iowa House race. The national level gun groups and national level politicians are irrelevant to me. These state organizations are the ones getting it done:

Iowa Firearms Coalition  
P.O. Box 994
Cedar Falls, IA 50613