Statewide, Iowa — Key backers of the right to keep and bear arms amendment Iowa voters have just added to Iowa’s Constitution say they’ll introduce a series of gun-related proposals in the 2023 Iowa Legislature.
House Republican Leader Matt Windschitl of Missouri Valley has been involved a gun-related issues since he first became a member of the House in 2007.
Windschitl and others gathered in the statehouse on December 9th for a ceremony to mark passage of the amendment.
The amendment got a majority of votes in 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties.
That last sentence is the state motto, adopted in 1847, the year after Iowa was recognized as a state. Secretary of State Paul Pate says the gun rights amendment was added to the state constitution on December 1st when statewide election results were certified.
Richard Rogers of the Iowa Firearms Coalition lobbied for the amendment as well as recent state laws on the use of weapons and gun permits.
This is the 49th amendment added to Iowa’s Constitution. It goes beyond the wording of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and says Iowa courts must evaluate any lawsuits challenging Iowa gun laws by the toughest legal standard, called “strict scrutiny.” For a law to pass the strict scrutiny test, the legislature must have passed the law to further a “compelling governmental interest,” and must have narrowly tailored the law to achieve that interest.
