Gun advocates in the Iowa House plan to resurrect their bill that addressed a wide range of gun-related issues. Representative Matt Windschitl says they’ll do it in a House Committee this afternoon (Wednesday) by taking up the bill passed by the Senate last (Tuesday) night that legalizes possession of gun silencers. Windschil then plans to ask the committee to vote to substitute the broad House-passed bill for the single-issue bill that cleared the senate.

“The ultimate goal will be to get it signed into law and do right by three million Iowans,” Windschitl says. Windschitl, a Republican from Missouri Valley, is among a group of legislators, law enforcement officials and gun rights advocates who’ve been working for the past several months to come up with a comprehensive bill to address a number of issues. Seventy-five of the 100 members of the Iowa House in early March voted for the bill Windschitl helped craft and the action Windschitl plans this afternoon (Wednesday) in a House Committee will keep that proposal alive.

“The House is very serious about this proposal. Iowans are very serious about this proposal. Law enforcement is very serious about this proposal and this is something that is a demonstration of multiple different groups coming together that can advance the rights of three million Iowans,” Windschitl says. Windschitl says the scaled-down package of gun-related proposals that Senate Democrats tried to offer as an alternative yesterday (Tuesday) “had not been previously discussed” with Windschitl and the rest of the group that had been working together on the issues.

“I think it offended a great many Iowans, including Iowans who are involved in law enforcement as well as those that are involved in the Second Amendment community,” Windschitl says. From the other side of the debate, Iowans for Gun Safety issued a written statement late Tuesday night praising what the group called “brave lawmakers in the Senate” for rejecting passage of the catch-all bill that Iowans for Gun Safety is lobbying against. Iowans for Gun Safety executive director Cheryl Thomas calls the House bill “truly dangerous” because it would get rid of Iowa’s three-day waiting period for buying a handgun.

(Radio Iowa)