I know we’ve been reaching out to you a lot over the last couple of weeks, giving you the facts about where the candidates stand on your right to keep and bear arms, before many of you make decisions on who to support this fall.
With early voting becoming an increasingly large segment of the total votes cast, it’s essential that we get this vital information into the hands of gun owners earlier than ever before!
In fact, as you read this, we are now just days away from when many in Iowa will make their decision on who to vote for in races all up and down the ballot.
So while I know I’ve asked a lot from you over the last few weeks, there’s more work for us to do between now and the 2nd Tuesday of November, and I need you to stand with us to defend the 2nd Amendment here in Iowa.
What’s Been Going On in Des Moines:
Too often I’ll hear from gun owners at gun shows or at the range some combination of “Ahh, gun control will never happen here, this is the mid-west.”
Being born and raised here myself, I understand that perspective.
It’s Iowa — most of us come from a strong tradition of common sense, hard work and personal responsibility that runs deep within us and so we can’t imagine out-of-control legislators in Des Moines trying to crack down on the 2nd Amendment.
But the truth is, we’ve seen more open and aggressive assaults on our 2nd Amendment rights in the past couple of years than most can imagine!
Consider former Rep. Dan Muhlbauer from Carroll County who, in 2013, after the horrific shooting in Sandy Hook, CT, called for a house-to-house confiscation of all semi-auto firearms.
He wasn’t saying ban future sales.
He wasn’t advocating that we maintain Iowa’s blockade on full auto firearms.
He called for legislation that would send law enforcement into your home to grab the Ruger 10/22, or Glock 19, or Remington 11/87 hunting shotgun right out of your gun safe!
Muhlbauer’s goal was shut down, but no one in his caucus in Des Moines rebuked him for attacking our right to keep and bear arms. In fact, it emboldened them!
Or consider the legislation being pushed in the Senate two years ago by Senators Beall and Sodders, SF 233. This is Michael Bloomberg’s signature legislative goal: universal background checks.
Sounds harmless, right?
The truth is, this legislation would make felons out of Iowa grandfathers who pass down family firearms to the next generation without obtaining government permission first and adding them to a database!
Want to loan a Remington 870 to your friend for pheasant opener? You’ll need government permission to do that, and if you don’t, you’re facing felony charges!
Even worse is the fact that that the only way to enforce this legislation is to create a defacto statewide gun registry, tracking every firearm and its owner in the process.
This is the goal of the gun control movement in Des Moines. You see, it’s never been about guns, it’s about control.
For the last two years, IGO has had to fight against more devious tracking schemes tucked inside of otherwise solid, pro-gun legislation.
In fact, just this year, anti-gunners introduced language that would create a searchable, statewide database of every single Iowan with a concealed carry permit!
Of course, as our neighbors in Missouri found out, it’s virtually impossible to stop that list from getting into the wrong hands!
Their state government gave a list of 173,000 Missouri permit holders to the Obama Dept. of Justice under the guise of a criminal investigation — not once, but twice!
Now, with the 2017 legislative session looming, Iowa Senator Matt McCoy has announced his intentions to introduce legislation to ban the sales and transfers of modern utility rifles — the kind that so many Iowans own for self-defense, hunting, and sports shooting!
Of course, all the gun control in the world didn’t stop the murderous rampage that occurred in Florida at the night club earlier this year.
In that case, the shooter went through 3 separate background checks, waited through a 5-day waiting period, and walked inside of a so-called “gun free zone” before killing 50 people!
But Senator McCoy believes that more control — and punishing law-abiding Iowans for the actions of a madmen — is the appropriate response to these tragedies.
What the Gun-Grabbers Are Counting On:
Lethargy.
Exhaustion.
Iowans tired of always having to stop these attacks on our gun rights — this is what the gun control crowd in Des Moines is banking on, as they wait for the right moment to try to ram through a gun control package.
They know that they might not be able to accomplish their goal today, but each time they introduce the legislation that I described above, they are gauging you and me!
Do we sit back and yawn, telling ourselves that “it’ll never happen here,” or do we pounce at the very mention of gun-control?
Even more, they are watching to see what we do during the election season!
Do we push back against gun-grabbers who push gun control and block pro-gun legislation?
Do we make those legislators pay a price for their bad political behavior, or do we choose to do nothing?
Of course, Iowa Gun Owners runs the hardest hitting and most effective educational program of any organization here in Iowa!
Members like you have crushed gun-grabbers time and time again at the ballot box — ending almost 30 legislative careers because those legislators supported gun control!
But the moment we let up, the moment we don’t take their attacks seriously, they’ll be emboldened.
What’s more, the most extreme gun-grabbers in Des Moines will be able to point to their friends in the caucus and say, “See, I told you nothing would happen if we pushed gun-control, it’s time to go all in!”
That’s why it’s essential that Iowa Gun Owners have the resources we need to fight back — hard — as we enter the home stretch of the 2016 election season!
The Next Colorado?
Like the Iowans I described above, gun owners in Colorado had long assumed that their gun rights were secure from any attack too.
After all, Colorado has a rich history of gun rights and rugged individualism who used their 2nd Amendment rights to settle the Rocky Mountains.
But the gun-grabbers kept testing the wire.
And they kept biding their time, waiting to see if they could find a time to ram their agenda into law.
That time came in 2013 — and the 2nd Amendment rights of 5.3 million Coloradans was severely damaged.
Universal gun registration and bans on magazines over a government imposed number — both were hammered through in the blink of an eye.
All in a state where everyone scoffed and said, “It’ll never happen here.”
Gun control activists look at Iowa as their next Colorado.
We’re a swing state, we are important in the Presidential selection process as the first-in-the-nation caucus state, and they want us to be a notch on their belt!
But that can’t happen if gun owners in Iowa stay mobilized and actively involved in the fight to protect and defend our right to keep and bear arms.
They Are Counting on Us!
This is about more than just our gun rights in 2016, 2017 or even 2026.
You and I are in a fight to preserve the very freedoms that defined this county at its start — the right to use arms to defend ourselves and our loved ones!
Our forefathers gave us these freedoms when they gave us this nation. Our grandfathers ensured that you and I had a 2nd Amendment right when we grew up.
And our children and grandchildren are now counting on you and me to fight hard for their future gun rights!
Right now, that fight consists of exposing gun grabbers like Steve Sodders, Mike Gronstal, Mary Jo Wilhelm, and others accountable for their attacks against our rights.
These legislators and their pals in Des Moines have to know that if you mess with our 2nd Amendment freedoms, you will absolutely pay a price for it!
We Need Your Help!
We are already underway in the early phases of our program to expose targeted anti-gunners across the state. With early voting being so common in Iowa, we have to run two separate programs to educate gun owners.
We’re educating Iowans with targeted direct mail, mass email deployments, radio ads, house-to-house literature drops, TV ads — everything but my kitchen sink!
But as much as we’ve done in the early voting phase of this cycle, we have much more to do as we finalize plans for the last two weeks of October!
And I need your help to run this program.
Every penny you provide is hammering a gun-grabber here in Iowa.
Every penny helps us expose them and hold the line against further attacks on our freedoms, and every legislator in the state will be reminded that you and I are always ready to defend our 2nd Amendment rights!
For others, I know that $20 represents a sacrificial gift.
Whatever you can do, I need you to do it right now.
With $50 I can deploy over 100 pieces of targeted mail to gun owners in Sodders’ district.
With $500 I can book at least a dozen radio ads to run in Council Bluffs, so gun owners and everyone else learns the truth about Senator Mike Gronstal’s support of gun control!
With just $20, I can ensure that at least 5,000 gun owners see our sponsored Facebook post in Waverly, Oelwein, and Independence, where anti-gun Senator Brian Schoenjahn is trying to fool gun owners into believing that he’s pro-gun.
For $2,500 I can run TV and radio ads in Senate District 26 at almost saturation levels during the final week of the campaign, reminding everyone that Senator Mary Jo-Wilhelm voted against Constitutional Carry and continues to leave women in Iowa vulnerable to attack by blocking advancement of Iowa’s Stand-Your-Ground legislation!
You see, whatever you can do, be it big or modest, will go directly into this fight!
We can do this!
We can hold the line against future gun control, expose anti-gun legislators, and pave the way towards passage of Constitutional Carry and Stand-Your-Ground law if we stand together now.
For Freedom,
Aaron Dorr
Executive Director
P.S. This election cycle will mark a turning point in the fight to defend the 2nd Amendment in Iowa.
Will you and I sit idly by while gun grabbers like Senator Steve Sodders and his pals lie to the voters and try to convince them that they are anything but radically anti-gun?
Or will we fight to defend the rights that our forefathers handed down to us?
The gun-grabbers are counting on you and me to give up, to get tired of this fight, to ram their agenda into law.
We can’t let that happen. We won’t let that happen!
Iowa Gun Owners has a program in place to expose gun grabbers and make sure everyone knows that there is a price to be paid for attacking the 2nd Amendment here in Iowa. I’ve laid that out in the email above.
This program is massive, involving mail, email, Facebook, radio, TV, and more, and it’s not free — but it’s absolutely essential!