Idaho Government Building Gun Laws: What You Can Carry and Where
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Been carrying in Idaho long enough to remember when the preemption question wasn't as clean as it is now. The 2023 Herndon case and the statutory response to it changed some real-world situations that affect where you can carry on a Tuesday afternoon — not just edge cases.
The practical result: Boise can't pass a city ordinance banning guns in city hall any more than a rural county can ban carry at the county courthouse — at least not through local ordinance.
This is the piece a lot of Idaho carriers don't fully internalize. Preemption means you don't need to look up Boise's policy versus Nampa's policy versus Twin Falls' policy. The state set the floor and the ceiling. That's genuinely useful — but it also means the exceptions that do exist are state-level exceptions, and they apply everywhere.
A city park rented out for a private wedding could post a no-firearms policy. The same park on a regular Tuesday afternoon — almost certainly cannot.
"Almost certainly" is doing some work in that sentence, and I'd note it for anyone who treats that as gospel. The statute says what it says, but you're still the one standing in front of a magistrate if something goes sideways. That said, this is a meaningful protection against agencies quietly putting up signs and hoping nobody reads the code.
Enhanced license holders cannot carry within student dormitories or residence halls — within the building of a "public entertainment facility" owned by the college or university — think theaters, auditoriums, sports arenas with seating capacity of at least 1,000 — if that facility is properly posted.
The enhanced license is an 8-hour class with live fire. That's a Saturday. If you work on a state campus or your kid goes to Boise State and you visit regularly, that enhanced license is the difference between being subject to campus board discretion and having a statutory right. Most people I've talked to at the counter haven't bothered because they don't think they "need" it — but this is exactly the situation where the paper matters.
Permitless carry framework tells you when you don't need a license — it doesn't suspend the location-specific prohibitions.
Worth printing out and taping above the safe. Permitless carry gave a lot of people the impression that the rules simplified across the board. They didn't. The courthouse is still the courthouse.
For anyone who carries regularly in the Treasure Valley or spends time on a state campus — have you actually looked up your specific institution's firearms policy, or have you been operating on assumptions about what the enhanced license covers?
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