Chip Baltimore (R-Boone), OWI w/ Gun, Gets off with Probation!

Probation for Iowa Rep. Chip Baltimore (R-Boone), who drove drunk with a gun in his car? Prosecutors and Baltimore's defense attorney asked the judge at the Center for Creative Justice in Ames for probation for the 51-year-old representative, not prison. Baltimore was sentenced to probation, a fine, and driving school. Corruption runs rampant in Iowa, although Baltimore did lose his seat as chair of the House Judiciary Committee. That's creative justice, all right. A little swat upside the head and no jail time.

We had to read a book, "The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice," now in its 11th edition, at the University of Iowa School of Social Work when I was getting my master's. The title seems implausible (or it did to me until I read the book) until you see what sentences elected officials and criminal bankers get or don't get compared to what the poor and especially people of color get.

Do you think anyone else who blew a 0.147 at 4:00 a.m., when the legal limit for blood alcohol is no more than 0.08, would have drawn probation and a fine for driving drunk, especially when there was a gun in the car at the time?

Ironically, Rep. Chip Baltimore was death on drunk drivers until he became one himself. But luckily for him, 10 months ago he successfully passed a bill reducing penalties for drunk drivers who were caught carrying weapons.

According to the Des Moines Register, "Before [the Iowa Omnibus Gun Law, supported by Chip Baltimore and other Republicans] went into effect, carrying a firearm while intoxicated was an aggravated misdemeanor, punishable by up to two years in prison. An OWI conviction provided clear grounds for revocation of a permit to carry a weapon.

"The new law, which went into effect July 1, [2017] cuts in half potential jail time and allows drunken drivers the ability to keep their permits to carry handguns."

Chip Baltimore is an attorney. Attorneys, especially attorneys in law firms, have high alcoholism rates.

Iowa is number 10 out of 18 states with the highest rates of drinking and driving in the nation. Iowa has 620 instances of drinking and driving out of 1,000 Iowans. That seems incredible, doesn't it?? Six out of 10 Iowans have instances of drinking and driving? The drunk driving fatality rate for Iowa is also high. Many convicted of drunk driving are still on the roads. One elderly Iowan who told his wife he was going out for milk and orange juice never came home. The man who blew a stop sign at 70 mph and killed the would-be shopper had been convicted of drunk driving eight times. He was still driving drunk.

It always seems that Iowa courts wait until a drunk driver kills someone before any sort of meaningful action is taken and obviously, in Baltimore's case, not even then. Should drunk drivers like Rep. Chip Baltimore (R-Boone) be able to keep their gun permit if they have a gun with them when they drive while intoxicated? Thanks to Chip Baltimore, they can.