Dozens of student and adult gun control activists rallied in the Iowa Capitol rotunda Monday to resist a bill that would loosen laws around carrying guns on school property.
The bill (HF 654) would allow a legal gun owner to keep a concealed handgun in their car while picking up or dropping off someone at school. The law would also allow gun owners to keep weapons in their cars at public universities and community colleges.
Republicans argue school and college campuses should not be off limits for legal gun owners.
Demonstrators marched around the rotunda chanting “enough’s enough,” and “protect kids, not guns.” Students lay down in a “die-in” to represent the fact that in 2020 firearms became the leading cause of death for American children.
The students who spoke at the Capitol protest organized by March for Our Lives Iowa and Iowa WTF said legislators should make it harder, not easier, to have guns near schools.
“We are sick of walking into school every day fearing for our lives and the lives of those we love,” said Hanna Hayes, a high school junior in Des Moines where there have been two recent school shootings.
In March 2022, two students were wounded and another was killed outside of East High School. In January at Starts Right Here, a nonprofit program affiliated with DMPS that helps students finish high school, two teenagers were fatally shot and the program's founder Will Keeps was critically wounded.
Hayes said other more recent shootings around the country should also give lawmakers pause.
“We’ve seen in the past few weeks that simply walking into the wrong driveway or going up to the wrong car can get you killed in this country,” she said. “And easy access to guns in cars will only make this risk much worse.”
The bill has passed in the House. Another version of the bill in the Iowa Senate (SF 543) has not come up for debate.
