For Immediate Release
Boise, Idaho, Thursday, January 21, 2016 – Representatives Heather Scott (R, D1) and Ron Nate (R, D34) introduced a permitless carry” bill on January 20th, 2016.
The Idaho Second Amendment Alliance (ISAA) has been working tirelessly to protect the rights of Idaho gun owners since our founding in 2012. The ISAA worked to support HB89 in the 2015 legislative session which would have enacted permitless carry in Idaho. However, in 2015 the ISAA’s Permitless Carry bill was relegated to a secret gun committee and shelved in favor of House Bill 301.
Following the 2015 session, Rep. Scott and Rep. Nate requested that they take the lead on getting Permitless Carry passed in Idaho and asked that the ISAA and gun owners get behind their efforts to do so. They know that this issue is vital to Idaho gun owners and that 2016 must be the year that Permitless Carry gets passed.
The ISAA laid out a set of guidelines that needed to be met to give Idaho gun owners the Permitless Carry version they wanted. Those included: no watered down amendments like training mandates and duty to inform and required that Permitless Carry be implemented throughout the state. Our initial goal with Permitless Carry was to do just that as a first step. At another point, restrictions such as age limit would then be targeted.
The bill that was introduced yesterday is not a bill the ISAA can support in its current form.
One primary issue that the ISAA has with this bill is its limitation on where citizens can carry. As the bill reads currently, a citizen can carry without a permit within city limits and they can also carry inside buildings within city limits as long as they have “permission from the property owner.” Such a restriction isn’t being requested by property owners but would be a mandate by our state government to do so.
Individual property owners (residential or business) can already request that someone carrying a gun leave their property. Under this current form of the bill, the gun owners are now forced by the government to request permission for entry or they are violating state law. Want to Permitless Carry in Walmart? You need to go to the property owner, not a manager or business owner, of each Walmart and get permission to do so.
There is no duty to inform, training mandates, and other unnecessary amendments in the bill which meets the guidelines the ISAA has set forth in an initial attempt at doing Permitless Carry. Those are the good things in this bill. Amendments are needed to bring this bill up to where the ISAA can support it and we will be providing our assessment and feedback to Rep. Nate and Rep. Scott in the near future.