Violent Gun Prevention
Fighting For Our Rights 2022
Gun deaths are surging in Iowa as a new law took effect July of 2021 that allows people to buy handguns and carry them in public without training or a permit more easily. As the new law fuels the violent gun crimes across the state we can only speculate that violent gun crimes will only continue to rise.
We only have to look at past years sutistics to grasp the reality of violent gun crimes and their ever so manifested destruction. Not all incidents involving guns are violent in nature but still very needless accidents and suicides from the use of firearms.
A record 353 Iowa residents died from gunshot wounds in 2020, including 263 suicides and 85 homicides, an Iowa Department of Public Health. The shooting deaths represent a 23% increase from Iowa’s previous high of 287 in 2019, including an 80% jump in homicides, according to state data. It's the most dramatic one-year hike in an upward trend that has accelerated since 2016. From 1999 to 2001, Iowa averaged only 194 annual gun deaths, including just 25 homicides, according to federal data.
Iowa is among several Republican-led states that have passed laws this year allowing for the permitless carry of guns, Iowa's new law also eliminates a requirement that people pass background checks to obtain permits to purchase handguns. Eliminating Iowa’s permit to acquire a handgun will facilitate impulsive purchases that can be associated with suicide and homicide and remove a deterrent against illegal gun trafficking, and it makes things worse, pointing to studies that have associated such changes elsewhere with a 25% or higher increase in homicides.
Let’s look at Chicago, Illinois for clarity for a moment.
While gun violence can happen anywhere, most shootings and killings in Chicago are concentrated on the heavily segregated West and South sides of the city. At least seven people were killed and a 4-year-old among 30 others wounded in citywide shootings in recent shootings this year. One person was killed and another wounded at University Village on the Near West Side. A man, 21, was standing outside about 12:10 a.m. in the 1300 block of West Hastings Street when someone fired shots from a passing dark-colored sedan, striking him in the back, Chicago police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. His name hasn’t been released yet. A 38-year-old woman sitting nearby was struck in the jaw and was taken to the same hospital, where she was in good condition, police said.
About 10 minutes later, a man was killed, and a woman wounded in a Bronzeville establishment on the South Side. The two were in the 4600 block of South King Drive about 12:20 a.m. when gunfire erupted after an argument between the man and a group of males, police said. The argument started after someone stepped on the woman’s shoes, according to preliminary information. The 25-year-old man was shot in the neck, arm and torso and was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, where he died to his injuries, police said. The woman, 27, was shot in the chin and was taken to the same hospital, where she was in fair condition, police said.
A 77-year-old concealed-carry license holder fatally shot a would-be robber in Burnside on the South Side. About 12:20 p.m., the man was in an open garage in the 500 block of East 89th Street when a vehicle pulled up in the alley and an armed male exited and demanded his belongings, police said. The man then shot at the would-be robber, fatally striking him in the head and chest, police said. The man was not injured and did have a valid concealed-carry license, according to police.
What kind of statement do you think that carries to the rest of the civilian population who have a valid concealed-carry license? It sends a message saying it’s ok to kill someone if your threatened or intimidated by a robber who is intending on making you a victim. Protecting yourself and your family is acceptable but killing someone is not unless you are in imminent danger. Homicide is justified when there is sufficient evidence to disprove (under the "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard for criminal charges, and "preponderance of evidence" standard for claims of wrongdoing, i.e. civil liability) the alleged criminal act or wrongdoing. The key to this legal defense is that it was reasonable for the subject to believe that there was an imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm to the innocent by the deceased when they committed the homicide. A homicide in this instance is blameless. Although it does not constitute homicide, charges, and claims of assaults, batteries, and other similar criminal charges and claims of wrongdoing are similarly defensible under the legal defense of self-defense.
The message is clear if you want to kill someone get a valid concealed-carry license and in Iowa the new law that allows people to buy handguns and carry them in public without training or a permit more easily only produces these types of violent gun crimes and legally justifiable acts of murder. When you increase the amount of people with a valid concealed-carry license you increase the murders, accidents, and assaults that happen wherever the concealed-carry license gives the holder a right to kill upon being attacked or assaulted in the commission of a crime where the victim feels justified by the criminal act of discharging their firearm at another person.