"Stand Your Ground" bill moves to Public Safety committee
An Iowa House Public Safety Sub-Committee met last week to vote on a version of the "Stand-Your-Ground" legislation, known as HF573.
The bill was advanced out of sub-committee, and is being considered today, Tuesday January 31, 2012, by the full Public Safety Committee.
Stand-Your-Ground legislation would do the following:
• Remove the current regulation that demands that you retreat in the face of an armed attacker
before taking defensive action. Yes, that’s correct, as the current code is interpreted by case
law, law abiding Iowans are required to try to flee their own homes in the face of a violent criminal.
• Allow law abiding Iowans to use force in defense of themselves or others any place that they are
lawfully allowed to be. This means that if your spouse if accosted in the parking lot at church
after a late night Bible study, the grocery store, or any place that they are legally allowed to be,
they may defend themselves if in immediate danger.
• Specifies exactly what types of felony crimes you may use deadly force to prevent and or stop,
to include: felonious assault, murder, violent or forced sexual abuse, kidnapping, robbery, arson,
or burglary.
• Creates a presumption of innocence if you are forced to defend yourself from any of these
situations. This specifically means that the investigative agency will not be able to arrest you for
using force in and of itself. Only upon probable cause of the improper or illegal use of force will
you be able to be arrested, thus sparing many law abiding citizens from the nightmare that can
currently result if you are forced to take defensive action.
• Specifically protects you from a civil action by the criminal or the criminal’s estate in the event that
you are forced to defense yourself. After all, it’s a small victory if you survive the attack on your life
only to spend your life’s savings to defend yourself in court for years to come.
This is an important piece of legislation that all gun owners in Iowa need. The anti-gun forces are loudly
fighting against this bill at the Capitol claiming, in effect, that this will result in a society where neighbors
shoot neighbors for stepping foot on their property.
This is nonsense, and we all know it.
But we can’t take a chance. We can’t let the anti-gun crowd scare legislators into walking away from
this legislation like they did last year.
Please take a moment today to call or email the members of the Iowa House Public Safety Committee
and urge them to support HF573, with no weakening amendments!
The committee members are listed below:
Representative Clel Baudler, clel.baudler@legis.state.ia.us
Representative Tom Shaw, Tom.Shaw@legis.state.ia.us, Representative Bob Kressig, bob.kressig@legis.state.ia.us, Representative Dwayne Alons, dwayne.alons@legis.state.ia.us Representative Mark Brandenburg, mark.brandenburg@legis.state. Representative Joel Fry, joel.fry@legis.state.ia.us, Representative Chris Hagenow, chris.hagenow@legis.state.ia. Representative Jarad Klein, jarad.klein@legis.state.ia.us, Representative Dan Muhlbauer, dan.muhlbauer@legis.state.ia. Representative Steven Olson, steven.olson@legis.state.ia.us Representative Henry Rayhons, henry.rayhons@legis.state.ia. Representative Thomas Sands, thomas.sands@legis.state.ia.us Representative Kurt Swaim, kurt.swaim@legis.state.ia.us, Representative David Tjepkes, david.tjepkes@legis.state.ia. Representative Matt Windschitl, Matt.windschitl@legis.state. Representative Mary Wolfe, Mary.wolfe@legis.state.ia.us, Representative Gary Worthan, gary.worthan@legis.state.ia.us