When ‘Shall Issue’ legislation took effect in Iowa in 2011, after Iowa Gun Owners passed it the year earlier as a byproduct of our efforts to pass Constitutional Carry, localities in Iowa went nuts.
Many fell for the hype from the media as well as the League of Municipalities and became convinced that with Iowans having easier access to obtaining a concealed carry permit, Iowa’s Main Streets would become the site of duels or acts of vigilante violence.
Of course, Iowa Gun Owners knew this would never happen, as did everyone else with two brain cells. But power hungry mayors and city council members, looking to flex their muscles, began work on passing ordinances to prohibit guns on city property.
All of this was being done in violation of Iowa Code 724.28, which states that local municipalities can not pass gun control laws that are more restrictive that state law. But Attorney General Tom Miller issued a finding supporting the municipalities, telling the state that he would not prosecute localities for violating the state’s pre-emption law.
The Dorr Brothers poured so much grassroots heat on the City Council in George, IA as they tried to ban guns in ‘their’ town, that the council cancelled their meeting and went to Sioux Falls to duck the pressure! Read the bottom paper, in particular!
(The legislature strengthened the state’s preemption law in 2017, as a rider to our Stand-Your-Ground law, which more or less ended these efforts by city mayors to curtail the Second Amendment at the municipal level. Learn more about that fight, here.) (HOTLINK)
And with Senate Democrats refusing to move any gun bill in their chamber, and House Republicans refusing to address this issue even if the Senate would advance the bill, the only option for Iowa Gun Owners was to battle these town gun ban proposals in town halls all over the state.
Of course, this involved actual work, which is why in the dozen plus local gun bans that the Dorr Brothers shot down for Iowa Gun Owners members, we never saw the Iowa Firearms Coalition.
While we can’t detail every town gun ban that the Dorr Brothers stopped for Iowa Gun Owners members, as that would be a twenty page article, these are some of the ones that really stood out.
In April of 2014, an IGO lifetime member from George, IA informed us that the City of George (NW IA) was about to have their final reading of what we dubbed the ‘Boss Hogg Ordinance.’
The language in George would make it a criminal violation for anyone to carry a firearm on ‘city property’ — meaning George’s parks, baseball fields, pool complex and much more would be off limits to gun owners — unless you were an ‘elected official.’
In other words, the Mayor and City Council of George would be immune form the very legislation that they were determined to force gun owners in ‘their’ town to live in!
The Dorr Brothers rolled out what would become a standard program for dealing with gun bans like this, once the threat was verified. While Aaron deployed multiple rounds of emails across the state, urging gun owners to contact the council, Chris rolled a similar program on Iowa Gun Owners’ Facebook page.
Those steps complete, Aaron then deployed a round of ‘robo calls’ to every Iowa Gun Owners supporter in a 50 miles radius. Finally, three days before the scheduled vote on this ordinance, Aaron and Chris and a team of IGO volunteers from the area passed out flyers door-to-door in George.
The results were explosive!
The council pulled the proposal from their agenda, immediately. But the calls and emails kept pouring in to the council’s office.
As you saw in the picture above, the council then CANCELLED their scheduled meeting, afraid of the reaction from local gun owners.
Iowa Gun Owners was told that the town clerk and members of the council actually left town, and hung out in Sioux Falls, SD for a few days, waiting for the heat to die down before returning home!
The City Council in Tama pulled the same stunt in Tama County, on November 3, 2014 — the day before the 2014 General Election.
A city employee in Tama, who happened to be an IGO member, called Aaron that morning, warning him that the vote to ban guns on city property was going to take place at 7pm that night!
Obviously time was tight.
Aaron called the Tama Mayor, who comfirmed the vote was scheduled for that night. He aggressively stated that he was in favor of making criminals out of Iowans who carry a firearm on city property, property that their own tax dollars paid to maintain, even though his actions would violate state law!
Aaron Dorr, doing an interview with ABC5 in front of the Tama, IA civic center, one hour before the council would meet and withdraw their attempt to ban the possession of firearms on city property after IGO members made their voices heard en masse!
After firing off an email to IGO members urging them to call the city council and protest, the Dorrs and some IGO volunteers headed to Tama, to pass out flyers city wide. Along the way, Chris ran the social media program, boosting a post that was seen by thousands of local gun owners in just a few hours.
Meanwhile, Aaron tipped off local media outlets. ABC5, bored of non stop election coverage, sent a reporter to Tama who covered the event and interviewed Aaron. They were on hand when the city council voted this language down later that night, after apologizing to the throng of gun owners who showed up.
Read more about this fight here, where you’ll see Aaron and Chris in the background.
The 35 gun owners who showed up that night in Tama were overjoyed to see their local petty tyrannts humilitated in front of the state, thanks to the efforts of the Dorr Brothers and ABC5.
It was a similar story in West Chester, IA, a few months later.
In this small town in Washington County, then-Mayor Chad Pfeiffer was trying to slide a local resolution into law, so that he could have the county sheriff bring criminal charges against long-time residents Dave and Judy McArtor because they dared to open carry on their own property, an action that was totally legal according to state law.
Mayor Pfeiffer was clearly used to using his physical presence to intimate older people like the McArtors, and he didn’t like it very much when his tactics didn’t work on the Dorr Brothers.
When confronted by Aaron, Pfeiffer refused to give him a copy of the proposed ordinance, he refused to comment on why he was targeting the McArtors, he refused to explain why he had an inordinately large police presence at council meetings, and he refused to confirm when the city was going to vote on the ordinance for the final time.
Aaron Dorr met with Dave and Judy McArtor, West Chester, IA residents, who were being bullied by Mayor Chad Pfeiffer in December 2014.
Aaron Dorr confronted West Chester Mayor Chad Pfeiffer in Dec. of 2014, over Pfeiffer’s bullying of the McArtors and his efforts to pass a local gun control ordinance. Pfeiffer quickly backed down after heat from IGO members flooded the town.
Immediately upon arriving back in the IGO office, the Dorr Brothers launched a full scale mobilization program just like they did in George.
They utilized robo calls, emails, a series of Facebook alerts, and a door to door literature drop, informing citizens of what Mayor Pfeiffer was trying to do.
It turned out that the McArtors were not the only citizens that the Mayor and city council were harassing in this town of 149 people.
Two weeks after the Dorr Brothers first met with the McArtors, the city dropped their attempted ordinance after an avalanche of angry calls from gun owners.
It turned out that Mayor Pfeiffer wasn’t the tough guy that he thought he was, once hundreds of gun owners started calling and emailing the town council!
2015 brought a rash of these proposals, too, as small town Iowa mayors tried to use Attorney General Miller’s position to ram their own gun control goals into law. The Dorrs and Iowa Gun Owners were there for every one of these threats!
Kalona tried to ban guns in their library in October, and then expanded that effort to include the rest of city property. To be clear, this would make criminals out of law abiding gun owners who already had a permit from the state to carry a firearm.
With social media becoming a much more effective tool by this time, a team of IGO volunteers and the Dorr Brothers arrived in Kalona the day of the vote (after launching emails and robo calls) to do live videos in town and pass out thousands of flyers before the meeting.
The video quality isn’t quite what they do these days, but you can see one of these mobilization videos on the IGO Facebook page right here.
Hundreds of people from Kalona called the numbers that we put on the flyer. The mayor barked at us and the council was furious, but they broke under the pressure that IGO members and the Dorr Brothers rained down on them throughout the day.
A copy of the flyer that Chris Dorr created as IGO fought against a city level gun ban in November of 2015.
And that’s all that matters! Another town gun ban defeated!
Check out the victory video that we shot that night on Kalona’s Main St. (a video that was seen by over 143,000 gun owners) by clicking here or on the image!
Each victory that IGO scored at the city level was a shot across the bow at other mayors and council members.
It became obvious that no mayor was safe…if there was going to be an effort to criminalize gun owners for doing nothing wrong…the Dorr Brothers were coming, and they were bringing Iowa Gun Owners along with them.
Not every mayor got the memo.
The mayor of Hubbard (North Central, IA) thought he could get away with filing an attempted town gun ban in late December, hoping that with the Christmas holidays looming large, IGO and the Dorrs would have no time to respond — according to a city employee who alerted us.
That didn’t pan out the way he intended.
After two rounds of robo calls, a few state wide email alerts, and a lit drop in Hubbard, a group of almost 60 gun owners turned out in opposition to the language that Mayor Marshall Simmerman tried to sneak into law.
Mayor Simmerman, when he broke under the pressure and pulled his proposal, tried to mock Aaron, telling him to ‘be sure and record one of your videos on your way back to Des Moines, bragging about your victory.’
Well, we didn’t wait that long!
Chris Dorr captured this picture of a crowd of angry gun owners who confronted the city council in Hubbard, in Dec. of 2015, after IGO exposed their gun control agenda.
Within 10 minutes of Mayor Simmerman crying ‘uncle,’ Aaron went live and made sure that almost 40,000 gun owners learned what a power hungry tyrant the mayor was.
It’s an old video, and some of our equipment wasn’t working well that night because it was COLD, but you can still see this video on the IGO Facebook page or by clicking the image below.
There was one more Mayor that needed to be taught a lesson in 2015 — and this would turn out to be the most successful operation that the Dorr Brothers conducted against a power hungry mayor.
Just a few miles away from Iowa City you’ll find North Liberty.
It’s a beautiful town, and there are legions of gun owners in and around North Liberty.
But it’s also home of some of the most aggressive gun-grabbers in the state legislature due to the area’s district dynamics.
So it was no surprise when then-Mayor Amy Nielsen launched her attack against gun owners. And it was no surprise that she drafted the nastiest proposal that we’d ever seen — banning not just guns but knives, pepper spray, stun guns, and every other self-defense item she could think of!
Aaron and Chris knew that they were going to have to hit hard, to stop this proposal.
And they did.
In addition to emails, robo calls, and literature drops, the Dorrs found special funding from outraged gun owners in the area who gave them a special budget to boost Facebook videos and meme posts into the area.
This gave Iowa Gun Owners almost saturation level exposure to this issue, and based on
the angry phone calls that Aaron received in his office from council members before the meeting even took place, the Dorrs knew this was going to be a hot fight!
Standing room only as Aaron Dorr addresses the North Liberty City Council on behalf of Iowa Gun Owners members in December of 2015. The council eventually dropped their proposal, after multiple attempts to pass it.
The council met in late 2015, in a council meeting that was attended by over 100 angry gun owners.
Chris took the picture below, from the doorway of the council meeting room, showing Aaron addressing the council.
But what you can’t see are the 45 gun owners behind him, who couldn’t even fit in the room!
Every single person who spoke out that night spoke against Mayor Nielsen’s ordinance!
Nielsen began to lose control, ordering the police to drag a Vietnam veteran out of the room for daring to ask when he could address the council before he was recognized to speak!
It was outrageous.
But with a council member not present that night, Mayor Nielsen convinced the council to delay voting on the ordinance for two weeks — hoping to buy herself some time to whip up support on the council.
That didn’t work out, as you can see from the picture below!
An even bigger crowd came out two weeks later, as IGO ran a massive mobilization campaign to get the word out.
Eventually a council member asked Aaron, “If we pull this ordinance tonight, can you assure us that we will stop getting so many phone calls?”
Aaron spoke with KGAN moments after Mayor Nielsen delayed voting on her radical gun control proposal, due to massive pressure from gun owners. Watch here.
Aaron said, “The calls will stop. But this is our second time doing this in just two weeks, if we have to come back a third time, we’re bringing 500 gun owners with us.”
The council members held an unofficial vote and decided to pull the item from their agenda for the last time! Gun owners in the room erupted in applause, despite Mayor Nielsen slamming her gavel and demanding silence.
Nielsen was by far and away the most arrogant mayor that the Dorr Brothers dealt with on behalf of Iowa Gun Owners. You can see that by just looking at her.
And if that’s not enough, check out this video that Aaron did after the victory in North Liberty, where you’ll see Nielsen getting her very own police escort to her car. You see, Nielsen is worthy of taxpayer funded security guards…while she fought to take away our right to defend ourselves.
An even larger crowd of gun owners turned out for the second council meeting in North Liberty, in late 2015. Gun owners prevailed that night.
VICTORY! Aaron did a video following the big win for gun owners in North Liberty in late 2015.
Honestly, it only made the victory that much sweeter!
Making sure 263,000 gun owners in Iowa heard what a power hungry tyrant Amy Nielsen was didn’t hurt either!
You can still watch that video yourself, right here.
North Liberty was the last town that tried to pass one of these local gun bans for several years.
The word had finally gotten out.
It was just too dangerous, politically, for a mayor to try to sneak in a gun control proposal.
As we mentioned earlier in this article, the state legislature finally tightened up on Iowa code 724.28 — the state’s preemption law — by adding some language onto IGO’s Stand-Your-Ground law in 2017, more or less ending these local attacks.