Iowa’s rated C-plus by a national group that monitors gun safety and efforts to protect children. Rob Wilcox with the Brady Campaign in Washington, D.C., says the middle-of-the-pack rating is the same Iowa got last year. He says Iowa has good laws including ones that hold adults responsible if they leave guns around within reach of children, they limit sales to kids and they require a permit to buy a handgun. On the other hand, Wilcox says Iowa’s far from A-plus because of other laws that don’t protect kids as well as they might. He says Iowa has no requirement for child-safety locks be sold with guns and no handgun-safety standards. He says they’re working hard to make changes in gun laws. The group worked with the “Million Mom March” in 1994 which now has chapters around the country and advocates work for gun-safety laws in almost all parts of the country. Wilcox says it’s an issued of child protection.The children of this country, he says, are 12 times as likely to be killed by a firearm as those in all other industrialized countries combined, and the group not only monitors states but works to change laws to protect people better.
