Over the last few days many of you have been contacting Public Safety Chairman Representative Clel Baudler strongly urging him to stop his blockade of Constitutional Carry and to stop weakening the plethora of other gun bills that are being gutted, stripped and weakened by Clel in his committee.
Some of you have been contacting our office wanting to know more about the record of Rep. Baudler, as Baudler has tried to carefully craft his pro-gun image.
Here are the facts: for 4 years now grass roots gun owners in Iowa have been working to deregulate the permit process. Law abiding Iowans are weary of having to take government mandated training. They are sick of paying for these classes and paying for a permit. They are very nervous about having the government know that they are a gun owner.
And they read the news.
You see, just last year, Wyoming passed Constitutional Carry, thereby allowing all law abiding people in that state to carry a gun without a permit. Just last month Constitutional Carry passed out of the House in New Hampshire.
These states are joining others like Vermont, Alaska, and Arizona in taking steps to make their people safer by arming more law abiding citizens.
Yet Iowa refuses.
In 2009 Iowa Gun Owners, working with then Rep. Kent Sorenson, forced a vote on Constitutional Carry as House Democrats refused to bring it up. Every single Republican voted for it, except for Clel Baudler and David Tjepkes.
In 2010, Constitutional Carry was locked down in a sub-committee that Clel Baudler sat on with two Democrats. Clel refused to even ask for a sub-committee meeting. He refused to call for a hearing on the bill. He refused to take any action on this bill.
Grassroots gun owners were tired of this and so they went door to door in district that year spreading around flyers informing voters about what their representative was doing regarding their gun rights.
Baudler blasted back saying that any Iowan who wants to carry a gun needs to be… “identified …trained…certified…and THEN and ONLY THEN will they be issued a permit.” He went on to say that to merely not be a felon should not grant you the right to own a gun saying, “Frankly, some of them are the ‘county nitwit’ or the ‘village idiot’ that I don’t want carrying a firearm.”
In other words, guns are for the elite. Guns are for the upper class. Not just any law abiding Iowan, but those with pedigrees.
At Iowa Gun Owners, we support the right of ALL law abiding Iowans to have the right to self-defense. The “county nitwit” has the same right to defend himself as does the governor.
When we partnered with Rep. Jason Schultz to force a vote in 2010 every single Republican in the House voted to approve Constitutional Carry – except for Clel Baudler and strong anti-gunner David Tjepkes.
During the historic elections here in Iowa in 2010, gun owners were incredibly mobilized and sent a loud message to Des Moines by kicking 16 anti-gun Representatives out of the House and 5 more legislators out of the Senate.
This resulted in the Republican Party taking control of the House, and Rep. Baudler was placed in charge of the Public Safety Committee where almost all of the gun bills are heard.
In 2011, now as the Chairman of the committee, Baudler went to work on your gun rights. It went something like this:
• Iowa Gun Owners’ Constitutional Carry bill, HF291, – didn’t even get a sub-committee vote;
• Our bill to repeal the unconstitutional permit to purchase bill, HF220, was given to Baudler’s friend David Tjepkes who flatly refused to move it at all;
• The NRA’s Emergency Power’s bill, HF320, which would stop state government from ordering gun confiscations as they did in Louisiana post Katrina, was never brought up for a committee vote;
• The pre-emption bill, brought up as an amendment, was similarly allowed to die.
Now in 2012 Baudler, in this same position, is doing it all over again;
• HF2113, Constitutional Carry, supported by IGO and NRA, Clel appointed himself to the sub-committee and won’t move it out;
• HF2114, Pre-Emption reform, supported by IGO and NRA, was watered down to be completely useless, and then was passed;
• HF2116, repeal of the permit to purchase, supported by IGO and NRA, assigned to himself and Rep. Tjepkes, and it is not even being talked about in sub-committee.
It’s obvious now, by any objective standard, that Rep. Baudler is only in favor of the 2nd Amendment when it’s heavily regulated and administered by the government.
The real issue here isn’t about Baudler. See, Republicans in the House leadership team have known for a long time about Clel’s hostility to your gun rights. Representatives from Iowa Gun Owners implored Speaker Paulsen to not place Baudler in charge of the Public Safety Committee and we laid out all these facts.
But they refused…and you and I are paying the price.
So please, take a moment today to call the Speaker of the House, Kraig Paulsen, at 515-281-3521 and strongly insist that he take immediate corrective action by replacing Baudler as the Chairman of the Public Safety Committee with a truly pro-gun representative like Rep. Dwayne Alons.
Let him know that you expect to see his party move Constitutional Carry and the other gun bills out of the House this year. You expect his party to honor their campaign promises. You expect his party to honor their party platform.
And it starts by dealing with Clel Baudler!
(If you’ve recently called the Capitol about this, please call again. Capitol insiders report that the grass roots pressure is getting intense and now is the time to continue with your calls.)
Please also consider supporting Iowa Gun Owners. We are in a tough fight on a variety of levels right now and are working virtually day and night to manage these bills, get alerts out to our members, and meet with potential candidates. These efforts take resources. Many of you have been extremely generous recently. We greatly appreciate it. But now is when we need to be effective. Please help us today with your donation of $50, $35, or even just $10.
For Freedom,
Aaron Dorr
Executive Director
P.S. House Public Safety Committee Chairman Clel Baudler has a 4 year history of undercutting, blocking, and impeding your 2nd Amendment rights. Whether it be bills from Iowa Gun Owners or other organizations, Clel does whatever he can to shut them down.
But this is no surprise. The House leadership team knew that before they put him into office. They need to take action at once to remove Baudler from his position or many of their party’s legislators are going to have a lot of unfulfilled promises as they approach the next election. Please call Speaker Paulsen today using the information from above.