The Idaho House has voted 57-11 in favor of HB 301, the concealed carry bill, which reorganizes and streamlines Idaho’s concealed-weapon laws while also removing any requirement for a concealed-carry permit outside city limits; current law allows that now for anyone engaged in a lawful outdoor activity.

Rep. Rick Youngblood, R-Nampa, said he opposed leaving in the elected-official exemption. “I personally call that a special privilege, one that I would not support personally,” he said. Youngblood said he’d vote in favor of the bill because of all the work that went into it, but he still objects to that part of it. “I don’t agree with any special privileges as a legislator that I might have over my constituents,” he said.

Rep. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, spoke against the bill. “I think that with our personal rights do come personal responsibility,” she said. “In my view, if we’re going to hide a gun, then I do feel we should have a permit to do so. … People can openly carry on their hip, proudly as an Idahoan. … But if we are going to hide it, especially in public, I think that extra safety measure of having a permit is a good thing. One, you get training. And the other thing is we can do a background check.”

Rep. Pete Nielsen, R-Mountain Home, said, “When it comes to the fact that I can carry without a permit as an elected official, I’m not willing to give that up. … If we give that up voluntarily, and we would be doing it voluntarily if we were legislators and agreed to that, then what are we saying? That we agree to the fact that we don’t have constitutional carry.”

Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, said she wanted to remind folks why the elected official exemption came into Idaho law a few decades ago. “There was an Idaho senator who was having a very strong disagreement with his sheriff on which the senator had voted opposite of what the sheriff wanted,” she said. “And this was before Idaho was a shall-issue state. Back then we were a may-issue state. … So that sheriff in retribution against the senator pulled his concealed weapons license. So the senator decided he had enough of that, that elected officials should not be held to blackmail, let’s say, by a sheriff. And that’s why that provision came in.” The bill now moves to a Senate committee.