Yesterday we told you about Sanctuary Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, who is challenging Rep. Bobby Kaufmann (R-Wilton) for House District 73. Pulkrabek has a record of wanting protections for illegal immigrants and refusing to cooperate with ICE.
For those wanting more information on Rep. Kaufmann, you can visit his Facebook page.
Pulkrabek also has a radical anti-gun record. In 2010 when Iowa became a shall-issue state, Pulkrabek led the charge against the change in the law.
“I think it’s unfortunate the NRA was able to come in, push the legislature around and get them to go along with this,” he said.
Five years later, it was reported that permits in Johnson County increased from 547 at the end of 2010 to 6,515. That is an incredible increase in citizens exercising their fundamental right to own and bear arms. Or, should we say, that is an incredible increase in citizens being allowed to do so.
Yet Pulkrabek was still defiant, saying he “could argue either side of it.”
Pulkrabek also expressed concern over the Stand Your Ground law as well. He said the law was “unnecessary.”
“What I’m concerned about with stand your ground is that it will make it much easier for someone to take someone’s life and simply say, ‘I felt threatened,’” he said.
Here Pulkrabek talks about people he had to give a weapons permit to due to the shall-issue law who he otherwise would have denied.
“Last year I never would’ve even considered giving it to him,” Pulkrabek said of one of the individuals.
One of his highlighted cases was a person who was charged with an OWI, but it was deferred. In 2002, he got a driving while revoked. In 2005, he received his second OWI offense. In 2005, he was charged with two instances of public intoxication.
“No way would I, that’s not a law-abiding citizen,” Pulkrabek said. “I would have denied that.”
He talked about another person who he said he doesn’t consider a law-abiding citizen.
Another individual was found guilty of unlawfully passing a school bus. Pulkrabek said he previously would’ve denied an individual’s ability to receive a permit to carry years later because they still owed money for a traffic citation.
“I can live with ignoring traffic laws, I can live with not prohibiting guns because of a traffic law violation,” he said. “But it’s the type of violation and the fact that he owed $330 in fines yet, at the time I signed it. In the past, if someone owed traffic fines even, I denied them. I just felt compelled to do that.”
