Republican lawmakers in Idaho are moving quickly on a bill to allow any school staffer to carry a concealed firearm on-campus without prior approval.
The bill from Rep. Ted Hill (R-Eagle) and the National Rifle Association would only require a staff member or educator to hold an enhanced concealed weapons license and to notify the school’s principal and district superintendent that they’re carrying a gun.
Those administrators would be required to maintain a confidential list of all employees and school volunteers who carry a concealed firearm and notify local and state law enforcement.
School board members would not need to be notified.
School employees or volunteers who lawfully carry a concealed gun would be immune from civil lawsuits stemming from their use or non-use of the weapon. Districts would also be forbidden from advertising a school as a “gun-free zone” and would be subject to a $300 fine for each offense.
Hill said Idaho needs more armed personnel on-site to limit the damage from school shootings, or to stop them in the first place.
“You have to answer violence with violence,” he said. “You can’t sit back and passively hope it’s going to be OK. This allows people to step up and defend.”
Paying professional guards to staff each school, Hill said, is prohibitively expensive and that this is the next best solution. Idaho law already allows for teachers to carry concealed weapons at school with prior permission from the local district.
“Here where we have the school boards that are not authorizing this it’s for a reason: because they think the gun is the problem,” said Aoibheann Cline, Northwest Regional Director for the NRA.
Rep. John Gannon (D-Boise) asked Cline multiple times whether parents or school administrators had been surveyed to gauge support for the legislation after she said her members were demanding its passage.
“A survey was not necessary,” she said.
“A lot of people are not going to like this, the people that are scared of guns, that guns are going to jump up and shoot them,” said Hill. “Focus on the [20 dead kids] stacked up in a classroom. We can stop that.”
Nearly everyone who testified Wednesday morning opposed the bill, including representatives from the Idaho School Boards Association, the Idaho Association of School Administrators and the Idaho Education Association.
Dianna David and her husband moved back to Idaho after a 30-year military and diplomatic career abroad.
“We never thought we’d have to take a stand on American soil to stop unsafe gun practices we’ve seen in other nations without common sense checks and balances,” David said. “Since our return, multiple common sense laws have fallen in Idaho … and that allows guns easily to find their way into the hands of unqualified people.”
State lawmakers have routinely loosened restrictions on firearms over the past several years in Idaho, including allowing any U.S. citizen or military member aged 18 or older to carry a concealed weapon without a permit in 2020.
The House State Affairs Committee passed the bill along party lines for the full House to consider the issue.
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