Iowa lawmakers pull gun bill after Florida deadly shooting

The “constitutional carry” firearms legislation that was slated for action was pulled from the Senate Judiciary Committee in the aftermath of the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., a day earlier.

“The team decided that we were not going to run it today,” said Sen. Jason Schultz, R-Schleswig, manager of Senate File 2106, who expressed confidence the bill had the votes needed to clear committee and the full Iowa Senate.

He said the Florida shooting, in which a gunman killed 17 people, “apparently changed the optics enough that the team together decided that it would be best that we didn’t.”

Committee Chairman Sen. Brad Zaun, R-Urbandale, said he made the decision to pull the gun bill from Thursday’s debate list after receiving indications the Iowa House did not plan to debate the issue this year and that Gov. Kim Reynolds was not interested in changing Iowa’s current permitting process.

“The governor said that she was not interested in this bill and liked the current permit system the way it is, and so I made the decision that it needed to be taken off the agenda,” Zaun said. “I’m disappointed. It makes me sick what happened down in Florida but with that said I did have the votes to move this thing forward” but “I decided to pull it off the agenda.”

...http://www.thegazette.com/subject/news/government/iowa-lawmakers-pull-gun-bill-after-florida-deadly-shooting-20180215