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Eye On Boise

Hagedorn on gun bill: ‘We have this unknown deterrent’

Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, speaks in favor of the guns-on-campus bill in the Idaho Senate on Tuesday (Betsy Russell)
Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, speaks in favor of the guns-on-campus bill in the Idaho Senate on Tuesday (Betsy Russell)

Sen. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, told the Senate, “I am my first responder. I would much rather … protect myself.” He noted that he has training and knows how to use and store his firearms, and said he was grateful for that in an incident last year in which a drunken intruder used his hot tub and tried to enter his house, before Hagedorn held him at gunpoint until police arrived.

 “Our Idaho state Constitution clearly says that Idaho has the ability to manage where we allow concealed weapons, and we have done that, and I think we have done that very well,” Hagedorn said. “The people that continuously talk about the woes that this is going to cause also continuously walk about in our malls, our restaurants, stores, cafes, with people that are carrying concealed weapons, and no one has been hurt. But you know what has happened, because Idaho does allow concealed carry, we have this unknown deterrent that continuously walks around. Where bad guys don’t know who’s armed, who’s not armed. Bad guys don’t know who to attack or who not to attack – except they know on campus, that’s a gun-free zone. … If I were a bad guy, I think that’s where I would go.”



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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