A proposed gun rights amendment will be up for a statewide vote in 2022.
Representative Steven Holt, a Republican from Denison, said the amendment is designed to preserve the right to keep and bear arms.
“It is the Second Amendment in modern day language, born from the wisdom of experience,” Holt said this evening during House debate. “For decades, progressives and those folks who…placed the blame on an inanimate object instead of the person pulling the trigger have assaulted this fundamental right.”
Democrats in the House and Senate opposed the language in the proposed amendment. They said it goes beyond the U-S Constitution’s Second Amendment and will lead to repeal of gun-related laws.
“To me, this is going to make law enforcement more dangerous,” said Senator Kevin Kinney, a Democrat from Oxford who is a retired deputy sheriff. “It’s going to allow background checks not to be done, people freely carrying weapons.”
Every Republican present in the Iowa House and Senate on Thursday voted to place the amendment on the 2022 ballot. It’s the culmination of a progress that started in 2018 and was delayed at one point by a filing error in the Secretary of State’s office.