Legislation expanding Idaho’s laws on violent threats against schools cleared the Idaho Senate Friday on a 32-1 vote, with several senators citing last week’s student protest against gun violence at the Capitol.
The bill, which has an emergency clause that would put it into effect as soon as it’s signed into law, earlier passed the House and is now headed to Governor Butch Otter. It would expand Idaho’s current school-threats law, which dates to 2006, to include threats of violence at schools or school activities made from off-site, including by phone or social media.
Threats would be misdemeanors, while possessing a deadly weapon as part of the threat would be a felony.
Moscow Republican Senator Dan Foreman debated twice against the bill, saying he thought the felony charge went too far. He questioned whether it would apply to a young person sitting at a computer at home making a threat, with a pocketknife in their pocket. Senators who are lawyers responded to Foreman’s question in their debate, and answered no.
Nearly 2,000 high school and junior high students left class to participate in a rally against gun violence at the Idaho Capitol on Wednesday, in concert with similar protests across the nation in response to the school shooting last month in Parkland, Florida. (Spokesman-Review)
