Blind in Iowa? Well, here’s a gun permit.
While a small posse of extreme right-wing ideologues have ultimately fulfilled their campaign pledges to their red-district constituents to close shop on the federal government, even months prior, through intransigence and mayhem, they have successfully stalled any sort of legislative action on vital domestic issues, like the high jobless rate, immigration reform, global warming, renewable energy independence, collapsing infrastructures, unacceptable delays in military family services, voter suppression, and tragic gun violence, among many others, that plague our nation.
During the media’s near obsessive fixation on the Donnybrook among brawling “Representatives,” a new law in Iowa recently went into effect and seems to have glided stealth fashion beneath the radar of many national outlets of the Fourth Estate. As reported in Iowa, recent changes in that state’s laws prohibit government officials from denying individuals gun permits on the basis of physical ability, including those with low vision and total blindness, unless they have prior felony convictions.
Proponents, including many legislators who sponsored the new law, argue that to do anything else would violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (signed into law in 1990), the Second Amendment of the Constitution, and the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
As someone who has experienced relatively low visual acuity and limited depth perception following four surgical procedures, I question whether the lawmakers were genuinely concerned about upholding the civil and human rights of people with disabilities, or whether their motivation centered on political ideology dictating no controls on gun ownership except for documented past criminal convictions.
I wonder how many of these Iowa legislators actively favored the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. I wonder how many of them actively support women’s reproductive freedoms guaranteed by the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision (1973). I wonder how many of them would have voted for the Civil Rights Bill in 1964 and the Voting Rights Bill in 1965 had they served in the U.S. Congress, and how many of them actually oppose the piercing through the heart of that same Voting Rights Law by the current Supreme Court this past summer.
So I ask again, is this law really about protections against discrimination, or rather, is this primarily about politics?
Would carrying a firearm had been the better option for Lindwood – a blind man who heard shots ring out around him in the atrium of Building 197 at the Washington Navy Yard, or rather, would it be better for more of us to act like the courageous Omar Grant who came to his aid telling his colleague “I’m not going to leave you. We’re going to get out of here.” And indeed they did!
I suppose brandishing a weapon (a knife) worked well for Audrey Hepburn in her starring role as Susy Hendrix, a blind woman, who in the film “Wait Until Dark,” subdued and killed a thug who broke into her apartment by smashing the light bulbs and unplugging the refrigerator light, thus plunging the scene into darkness and, thereby, neutralizing the attacker’s advantage. Who knows, she might have had more immediate success if she had hidden a hand gun in her bedroom night stand or an AK-47 among tuna cans, rice, and non-dairy coffee creamer in her kitchen pantry. But tell me, how many real-life folks with visual disabilities find themselves in this type of Hollywood-contrived drama with successful outcomes like that of Audrey?
It makes about as much sense to grant the right of a person with significant visual limitations to own a gun as it does for us to drive a Mack Truck! Yes, it is true that our Constitution gives no one an automatic right to drive a vehicle as it does to own and carry a firearm. However, avid Second Amendment enthusiasts often neglect to acknowledge a certain phrase written into the statute that reads: “A well regulated militia….”
Unfortunately, the Iowa law fails to abide by this standard, which further places us all in the severely out-of-focus crosshairs.
–Photo: Gregory Wild-Smith/Flickr
This strikes me as being a great example of the perverse side effects of how groups like the NRA look at guns in general. They seem to see guns as a sort of universal good, like how a libertarian might view the idea of shrinking the size of government . Owning a gun is good, owning more than one is better and being able to take them anywhere is best of all. So they don’t seem to ask “does giving blind people access to guns make sense?” Instead they start with the prior assumption that guns are automatically good so… Read more »
I hate to be a party pooper but its illegal to discharge a firearm in a reckless manner. Negligent or reckless discharge laws pretty much prevent firing a weapon without knowing what you’re pointing it at. This law means that blind people can CARRY a weapon. Otherwise, the same laws apply to them as anyone else.
Back to your regularly scheduled outrage.
My very first reaction was to agree with you. On the surface, it does seem absurd to let blind people carry firearms. However, the more I think about it, and as much as I hate to agree with gun rights’ advocates, I do see some valid points here, at least in terms of equality. Whatever laws currently allow or restrict gun possession, none of them dictate that you can only use a gun in self-defense if you can see your attacker. In case of a pitch-black nighttime home invasion, no one is required by law to turn the lights on… Read more »