The Wyoming House has voted 50-10 overwhelmingly in favor of HB 172, “Repeal Gun Free Zones and Preemption Amendments.” Now headed to the Senate, HB 172 will potentially allow concealed carry in schools, government buildings and meetings, including college and university sporting events not serving alcohol. With the history of the bill dating back 12 years, this effort marks the 10th endeavor to get it through the Wyoming Legislature and passed into law. A similar measure, passed by the House in 2024, was killed in a Senate committee but resurrected by former Sheridan Senator Dave Kinskey. Ultimately, the bill passed in the Senate only to be vetoed by Governor Mark Gordon after the conclusion of the Wyoming Legislature’s 2024 budget session.

Representative Jeremy Haroldson, HB 172’s primary sponsor for the last three years, expressed his unwavering support, telling the Sheridan Press that he plans to continue sponsoring the bill every year he remains a lawmaker until it is signed into law. 

Although nine amendments were proposed to HB 172 by lawmakers, the draft headed to the Wyoming Senate remains largely intact, with only a single addition allowing government entities to require employees and students to store firearms safely when they are not being carried. 

“This is more prescriptive language but at the same time giving our schools and our higher educational facilities the opportunity to make some standards,” according to Haroldson.

Failed amendments to the bill included measures that would have allowed governmental entities to determine a carrying prohibition during specific meetings, forbidden firearms in all early childhood centers and barred those between 18 and 21 from carrying firearms at elementary, middle and high schools. 

Not without defectors, Allen Thompson, executive director of the Wyoming Association of Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police, shared the association’s preference that the state continue to allow local school boards discretion as to whether staff may be armed.

“We still do have that desire for local control because our school districts across the state work with the police department and sheriff’s offices, and we have school resource officers embedded in many of these schools…Each community and each school is different,” says Thompson.

Finding himself in concert with Democrat Representative Mike Yin of Jackson is not a great look for Thompson in the overwhelmingly conservative state of Wyoming, where Constitutional values and the Second Amendment are a way of life for most residents. Yin, sharing a similar sentiment to Thompson, reveals his leftist playbook for corrupting conservative states through the implementation of local control. 

“Local control is something that has governed our state for a very, very, very long time, and this is a bill that strips that away,” Yin told The Sheridan Press.

Sure thing, Mike, but would you like to know what has been around for an even longer time than your precious control any way you can get it? The Second Amendment and it shall not be infringed. Keep your seditiously short memory in Jackson, or better yet, head to California, where you belong.