“You have a rule and it’s for the good guy to follow; the already upstanding individual that does their best not to break laws,” said Colby, a store manager and firearms instructor. “So, basically you’re making a law for the good people that wouldn’t have done anything ridiculous to begin with, and now you’re going to post a sign or something and hope that it makes people feel warm and fuzzy and (that) nothing bad is going to happen because of this, and that’s just false thinking.”

Wilke’s order was not the first in the state.

Seventh Judicial District Chief Judge Marlita A. Greve previously issued a similar order for one of the five counties in her district, Cedar County. The other four counties already had weapons bans in place.

Three counties in the Second Judicial District — Butler, Cerro Gordo, Floyd and Wright counties — had already banned guns and weapons in their respective courthouses by ordinance or courthouse policy prior to Wilke’s order.

Most of North Iowa is included in the Second Judicial District.

Kossuth County, which is in the Third Judicial District, does not have a building-wide or judicial-specific weapons ban.