Sheriff warns about limitations of permitless carry law

By ANDREW MCGINN a.mcginn@beeherald.com

Whether legislators oversold the new state law allowing permitless carry of guns, or the public simply misunderstood, the message has been that Iowa is now akin to Deadwood circa 1876.

“The message,” Sheriff Jack Williams recently told local media, “has been ‘carry it where you want to, how you want to.’”

In many ways, that’s true, but politicians always hedge their bets.

There are certain limitations to the law that went into effect July 1, Williams and County Attorney Thomas Laehn have found on closer review, which could ensnare law-abiding citizens.

Chief among them: a permit to carry is still required in order to have a loaded gun in a vehicle.

Williams called it “by far the biggest misconception with this law.”

Without a permit, he said, a handgun in a car would need to be unloaded, in a secure case and not easily accessible. Rifles and shotguns, Williams said, need to be disassembled, in a secure case and not easily accessible.

A permit to carry, he explained, costs about $100, requires a class and is valid for five years.

Being caught with a loaded gun in a vehicle without a permit to carry ranges from an aggravated misdemeanor to a felony. Williams said he has instructed his deputies to use “extreme decision making” before automatically charging someone. There likely will be a period of education, Williams said.

A second point of concern is that the law prohibits someone convicted of a serious or aggravated misdemeanor from possessing a firearm for three years.

Williams said the two points of concern have “very serious repercussions” for someone who might not be aware of the law.

“Some of this clearly hasn’t gone through the court system,” Laehn said of his review of the law.

Case in point: a federal court, Laehn said, recently invalidated another state’s law prohibiting anyone younger than 21 from possessing a handgun as a violation of the Second Amendment. However, Iowa’s weeks-old weapons law contains a similar provision prohibiting those younger than 21 from acquiring a handgun except when required for certain duties.

By and large, though, House File 756 — signed into law in April by Gov. Kim Reynolds — removes the requirement for a permit to acquire or carry a handgun.

A background check is still needed, unless with a permit, to acquire a handgun from a federally licensed firearms dealer.

The Iowa Department of Public Safety approved a total of 5,980 permits in fiscal-year 2019, according to an analysis of HF756 prepared in June by the Legislative Services Agency (LSA).

While permit fee revenue will take an unspecified hit from the new law, the justice system is expected to save millions due to fewer convictions for carrying weapons, according to LSA. In FY19, there were 631 aggravated misdemeanor convictions in Iowa for carrying weapons, with Black Iowans impacted disproportionately. Blacks make up 3.6 percent of the state population yet accounted for 26.9 percent of convictions under the Iowa Code section on carrying weapons.

For that reason, LSA predicted the new law will have a positive impact on minorities in Iowa.

Laehn said there are still good reasons to acquire a permit to carry, especially if travel to another state is in your future plans.

“Those other states are not going to recognize our permitless carry,” he said, adding that only six states have permitless carry.

A permit to carry from Iowa, however, carries reciprocity with two dozen states, Laehn said.

The new law went into effect at a time of record-breaking gun violence in Iowa, the Associated Press reported on June 29. According to the AP, there were a record 353 gun deaths in Iowa in 2020, including 263 suicides and 85 homicides. Homicides were up 80 percent over 2019.