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Eye On Boise

Harwood gun bill hits snag, delayed

Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, urges the House State Affairs Committee on Tuesday to support HB 589, his bill to exempt guns or ammunition made in Idaho from federal laws including registration. The committee voted to delay a decision on the bill. (Betsy Russell)
Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, urges the House State Affairs Committee on Tuesday to support HB 589, his bill to exempt guns or ammunition made in Idaho from federal laws including registration. The committee voted to delay a decision on the bill. (Betsy Russell)

The House State Affairs Committee voted today to delay a vote on HB 589, Rep. Dick Harwood's bill to declare any guns or ammunition manufactured in Idaho exempt from registration or any other federal laws or requirements, after some committee members said there might be legal flaws in the bill. Rep. Phylis King, D-Boise, distributed an Idaho Attorney General's opinion she requested that found the bill "likely unconstitutional" and said, "An attempt to nullify federal statutes is beyond the power of the Idaho Legislature." Rep. Lynn Luker, R-Boise, said he thought an amendment was needed to clarify wording regarding made-in-Idaho products, to specify that they were also to be used just in Idaho.

Harwood, R-St. Maries, said he wasn't deterred by the attorney general's opinion. "Y'know the supreme law of the land sometimes is maybe not always right," he told the committee. "There was a prohibition law and that was not right. .. They ended up turning around and saying, well, what we did there was wrong. Another one was ... the United States Supreme Court upheld, to protect a slave owner, they said that a slave was not a person, it's a piece of property - we all know that's wrong. That didn't get overturned until the people went back and said this is wrong. You have to push the envelope ... That's what this bill is doing."

Harwood said after the vote that he'll confer with the other sponsors of the bill regarding Luker's concern, and see if the change would cause any problem, then return to the committee. He said the bill as written matches bills passed in Montana and Tennessee that now are being challenged in federal court.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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