‘Dead kids are everybody’s jurisdiction’: Boise City Council seeks gun-control measures

Boise City Council Member Kathy Corless’s voice wavered as she described a close call at her daughter’s junior high school on Monday: The school district sent a message to hundreds of parents about a threat a student made on social media.

“We continue to see this happen, and this is now a reality,” Corless said. “That our kids have to go through these active shooter drills is almost beyond (comprehension).”

Her comments were part of an emotional discussion Tuesday of a resolution by the City Council reaffirming the council’s commitment to gun safety efforts. The resolution, sponsored by Council Member Jimmy Hallyburton after recent school shootings in Georgia and Maryland, called for state and federal leaders to require background checks for gun sales, restrict ownership of military-style guns and limit gun access for people in crisis.

During the meeting, Council President Colin Nash recounted his grandmother’s loss of both husbands to gun violence.

“If you’ve been directly affected by gun violence … those conversations become pretty real pretty quick,” Hallyburton told the Idaho Statesman by phone Thursday.

On its face, the resolution doesn’t seem like much of a change. Resolutions aren’t enforceable by law in Idaho, and its language calls only for the council to “continue” to support gun reform and urge federal and state policy change.

But Hallyburton told the Statesman he aimed to change the tenor of the local conversation around gun control and the Second Amendment. During the meeting, he emphasized that the resolution wasn’t meant to point fingers at those with opposing views.

“I want to make sure it’s crystal clear that I’m not placing blame on anyone,” he said. “I’m asking for help. I’m asking for our state legislators to see the city of Boise as a partner in addressing these issues … and to see this as an opportunity to figure out, what is it that we can do to reduce the amount of kids that are committing suicide in Idaho, what can we do to reduce the possibility of a shooting happening at one of our schools?”

In the days since, Hallyburton said he’s been deluged with emails ranging from enthusiastic support of the resolution to angry recrimination. On X, formerly known as Twitter, the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance suggested such a resolution was unrealistic in Idaho. Two Idaho Panhandle legislators derided it, with Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, calling council members “communists” and Rep. Phil Hart, R-Kellogg, calling the resolution “illegal.”

Hallyburton has been dwelling on those in between.

“Some of the folks who reached out that, I think, even disagreed with some of the solutions that I was asking for … I think they appreciated the tone that I was bringing forward,” he said. “Like, ‘you’re not pointing a finger, and I think that is part of the solution. Even though you’re presenting an idea that I disagree with, I appreciate the tone in which you’re doing it, because it’s opening up the conversation rather than shutting it down.’”

The resolution, reported by the Idaho Dispatch, passed with five votes. Council Member Luci Willits, the council’s lone Republican, voted against it. She argued it went outside of the council’s lane to prescribe policy for state and federal officials. Instead, she said, Boise should focus on its own policies, whether that means spending on public safety or on school resource officers.

Nash pushed back. Boise “can do more, and we will do more, but we need help to do it,” he said, “because dead kids are everybody’s jurisdiction.”

Hallyburton placed the gun safety conversation in the context of Idaho’s youth suicide rate, among the highest in the country. Many of those completed suicides, he said, used a gun.

Many on the right, he acknowledged, say the conversation around gun violence should focus on mental health care, rather than on access to guns. He doesn’t see those as mutually exclusive solutions.

“When we’re addressing these types of issues, we shouldn’t really be leaving solutions off the table,” he said.