Iowans no longer need a permit to carry a firearm as the Iowa Department of Public Health has reported a record number of people died from gunshot wounds in 2020.

Changes to the state’s gun laws taking effect today remove the requirement for a permit to acquire or a permit to carry in order to purchase a handgun or carry a firearm in public places, subject to certain limitations. This comes as an IDPH spokeswoman said Tuesday that a record 353 people in Iowa died from gunshot wounds in 2020, including 263 suicides and 85 homicides. This is a 23% increase from the state’s previous high in 2019, with an 80% jump in homicides. It’s the most dramatic one-year increase in an upward trend of the last several years.

Washington County Sheriff Jared Schneider doesn’t expect permitless carry to make much of a local impact to public safety, “I don’t think the changes that they made this year are going to drastically change things moving forward. I think there were some concerns that permitless carry is just going to be everybody out there carrying that shouldn’t have been carrying before. And some of those situations that might have been going on before the permitless carry change. If they were prohibited from carrying a gun and didn’t have a permit to carry before, that didn’t keep them from actually carrying a gun.”

Schneider says permitless carry won’t apply to those who are prohibited from carrying a firearm and those perpetrators will be charged accordingly. Iowans must be at least 21 years old in order to carry without a permit or obtain a nonprofessional permit to carry weapons, though there are certain exemptions for those 18 to 20 years old who are working in an occupation that requires a firearm. For more information on changes to the gun law, visit here.