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The “Take up arms” The amendment on Iowa’s general election may not be as effective as the National Rifle Association’s when it asks states to participate. “a thorough inspection” an amendment in their state constitution, said a district attorney.
With Measure 1 on Tuesday’s ballot, Iowa is poised to join Alabama, Louisiana and Missouri as states that recognize gun control as a fundamental right protected by strict oversight.
All the words of the measure are: “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed upon. Iowa independence affirms and recognizes this right as an individual right. All restrictions and limitations of this right must be carefully examined.”
Scrutiny is the highest level of judicial review used to review the validity of laws.
“Scrutiny means that the government has to show that they have a strong interest in this law, and that the law is poorly constructed to meet that strong interest,” said district attorney Jerry Schnurr III.
Schnurr is a past president of the Iowa State Bar Association and has more than 35 years of experience in the legal field.
“The idea is that the NRA wants to build this iron wall around gun control,” Schnurr said, noting that the plain language in the amendment doesn’t do that.
The question, Schnurr said, is what justice is meant in the amendment?
“Is the right now, at the time of the visit to keep and keep a gun?” he asked. “Yes, there are restrictions on that right, like criminals can’t.”
State judges will bear the burden of interpreting that “talk” language and appeal to state laws, Schnurr said. The courts will decide whether “right” the amendment includes the rights Iowans currently have to own guns, with some restrictions; or if “right” everyone has an unlimited right to own any type of firearm.
“The proposed amendments require strict scrutiny and leave the courts with considerable leeway in defining the scope of constitutional fairness to which the strict scrutiny standard applies,” University of Iowa College of Law Professor Todd E. Pettys wrote the 2019 Iowa Law Review.
“The task of determining how broadly the fundamental right to keep and bear arms is fully protected will fall to the judges — the very people who call it ‘gun reform,'” the NRA says. these amendments must first be made,” Pettys wrote his Iowa Law Review essay.
Iowa law currently prohibits felons and people convicted of domestic violence from owning or owning a firearm. If the courts interpret the sentence “right” Ordinarily an unlimited power with no restrictions, those laws that prevent felons from owning guns fall under strict scrutiny because they are too broad, Schnurr said. If the courts strike down these laws, he said, there will be no law preventing any felon — violent or not — from owning a gun in Iowa.
“It seems our legislature has expanded gun control and ownership rather than restricting them,” Schnurr said. “They can be narrow [the restrictions on felons]? I think they can. Can they? I don’t know.”
But to create that “iron wall” around gun rights, Iowa’s proposed amendment could muddy the waters of the legal system, Schnurr said.
“So many questions, so many unanswered questions,” he said. “There are a lot of lawsuits about it, I don’t know how the court will do.”
Domestic violence advocates say the amendment would undermine efforts to improve safety and make it harder to prevent violence. Correction “judges want to emphasize gun rights over public safety at all times, inviting legal challenges to existing law and making it difficult to pass gun safety measures supported by the majority of Iowans,” according to the Iowa Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
Domestic violence and gun violence “uninterrupted connection,” and both are public health problems, according to ICADV.
According to the Education Fund to End Gun Violence, when guns are involved in domestic violence, the spouse is five times more likely to die. 55% of women were murdered by an intimate partner with a gun.
A no vote on Proposition 1 will not take away gun rights, according to ICADV. “No vote rejecting changes to Iowa’s constitution will make it more difficult for lawmakers to enact policies to help prevent gun violence, such as background checks and restricting entry for people who are at risk of harming themselves or others.
On Tuesday, the ballot measure only needs to be approved by a simple majority of voters to pass.
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