Wyoming officially put an end to most of its gun-free zones on July 1, eliminating that form of concealed firearm regulation in many public spaces across the state.
Concealed guns can now be brought to public schools, certain sections of airports, community colleges, some state agencies, the University of Wyoming (UW) and legislative committee meetings, depending on local rules.
The change comes after states that have similar laws to Wyoming’s HB 172, like Ohio, Georgia and Nebraska, saw increases in firearms-related injuries after their laws’ passage.
That’s according to a legislative analysis written for Wyoming Public Radio by the Gun Violence Data Hub, an initiative from the nonpartisan newsroom The Trace, which writes about gun violence in the U.S.
In all three states, the numbers of gun deaths, gun injuries and overall gun incidents increased after restrictions on carrying firearms were relaxed, said Ava Sasani, a journalist for The Trace who worked on the analysis.
Victory for Second Amendment rights
Wyomingites can now bring concealed guns into a slew of new spaces where they’d previously been banned, depending on local policy.
Individual school boards, for instance, have been scrambling to write or revise policies for concealed carry on campuses as the law’s July 1 effective date neared.
The law allows boards to determine what requirements faculty and staff need to undergo before they can bring guns to school, but doesn’t let school officials limit that right.
“[I’m feeling] excitement,” Rep. Jeremy Haroldson (R-Wheatland) said in a phone interview with WPR. He sponsored the repeal and is a member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. “There's been a lot of conversations with school boards, a lot of conversations with local communities. I just appreciate the work that's been put in by all parties and all people involved. Obviously, I don't fully agree with every position someone's taken on in regards to this. But at the same time, we put provisions in the bill to be able to give some local control on some of these aspects.”
Haroldson said he rejects the argument made during the recent legislative general session that the repeal of gun-free zones represents a wholesale degradation of local governments’ control.
Gov. Mark Gordon made a similar local control argument in his ‘no-sign’ letter for HB 172, where he explained his reasoning for allowing the bill to become law without signing it. Gordon cited the right of the state Legislature to “drop a political bomb” following recent elections that put Freedom Caucus members in the majority in the state House.
But Haroldson pointed to the importance of Second Amendment rights in Wyoming.
“It doesn't matter at what level, we don't have the right or the ability to erode constitutional provisions,” Haroldson said. “The local control argument, it does not hold water, in my opinion, to say, ‘Well, this is a local control issue, and we should have allowed local control to decide.’ Just because they want local control doesn't give them the right to trample on our constitutional rights.”
Before repealing gun-free zones this year, the Legislature passed HB 194, “School safety and security,” in 2017. It gave individual school districts the ability to come up with concealed carry policies for their employees.
Some legislators greenlit the bill with the hope that school districts would put such policies in place, although only a handful ended up doing so, according to Haroldson.
“The reality is the Legislature gave them that ability with the intention for them to walk that out, to actually make that reality,” he said. “Because back in 2017 when this conversation went forward, it was, ‘Eliminate the gun-free zones.’ The schools said, ‘No, leave it local controlled, we'll do it. We'll eliminate the gun-free zones, but let us do it in our way and in our time.’ The Legislature said, ‘Okay.’ Well, here we are nine years later. I think we're up to six [districts] that had [done that] before this bill went into effect.”
Repealing gun-free zones has forced districts to address the issue on state lawmakers’ timetable, protecting Wyoming residents and solidifying their right to carry firearms, Haroldson said.
In a poll of 497 likely general election voters in Wyoming conducted for the Freedom Caucus ahead of the November election, 5% of respondents listed “Protecting the Second Amendment” as their top issue.
“ We just see people's freedoms restored in a lot of ways when it comes to their ability to bear arms,” he said. “I look forward to just seeing what that means for the safety of our students, the safety of our employees and workers in our government buildings, and just continuing to preserve freedoms in the state of Wyoming.”
By the numbers: A question of safety
But to some, it remains an open question whether the new law will keep so-called sensitive areas like public schools safe or not, especially after the multi-state analysis of similar gun laws by The Trace’s Data Hub. Academic research on the subject shows more guns frequently lead to more crime, not less.
Forty-five states, including Wyoming, have passed what are called “preemption laws” in recent years that give state governments the authority over towns and cities to dictate firearms policy. Wyoming’s first preemption law was the Wyoming Firearms Freedom Act-2 passed in 2010.
To explore what might happen in Wyoming, the Data Hub used information from the Gun Violence Archive (GVA) to compare Ohio, Georgia and Nebraska’s laws. These states’ regulations are slightly different from Wyoming’s.
The GVA uses police reports and news stories for its archive.
Georgia
Georgia’s HB 280 allows concealed carry permit holders to bring firearms to certain parts of “any public college or university facility.” It went into effect in 2017.
Journalists at the Data Hub looked at gun-related incidents in the three years before Georgia’s law went into effect and the three years after.
The analysis defined “gun-related incidents” as “any incident in which a gun was fired, a gun was used to threaten somebody, or a person acting erratically had a gun in their possession.”
In the three years before HB 280 took effect, the GVA found three injuries, one death and 11 gun-related incidents on college or university campuses in Georgia.
In the three years after HB 280 took effect, the GVA found 13 injuries, three deaths and 16 gun-related incidents on college or university campuses in Georgia.
Omaha, Nebraska
Nebraska’s concealed carry law, LB 77, is another analogue to Wyoming’s.
But Omaha, a left-leaning city in Nebraska, passed a policy shortly before LB 77 went into effect that prohibited concealed carry in the city in a variety of public spaces. That city’s law was blocked by a court injunction on February 9, 2024.
The Trace’s analysis looked at the same variables as with Georgia – injuries, deaths and gun-related incidents – before and after the injunction.
A little more than a year before the injunction, when Omaha’s prohibition was still in effect, the GVA found 97 gun-related incidents resulting in 100 injuries and 24 deaths.
A little more than a year after the injunction, the GVA found 112 incidents resulting in 115 injuries and 27 deaths.
Ohio
Finally, The Trace looked at Ohio’s efforts to make concealed carry in public schools “significantly easier.” HB 99 cut down the number of training hours employees needed in order to bring firearms to campus from 700 to 24.
In the almost two and a half years before the law went into effect, the GVA found 53 firearms-related incidents near schools resulting in four injuries and one death.
In the almost two and a half years after the law went into effect, the GVA found 138 gun-related incidents near schools resulting in 11 injuries and three deaths.
Bottom line
The data used in the analysis has some limitations, according to Sasani.
“ The limitation of GVA is you're going to see an overrepresentation of gun violence in cities, because that is just generally where news [coverage] is more likely to be,” she said.
Also, for The Trace’s analysis, Sasani said they did not include mass shootings, since they qualify as outliers.
Another possible limitation is undercounting, since the GVA uses news stories, social media and police reports, and not all gun-related incidents get that level of attention.
Sasani said that the section of Wyoming’s gun-free zones repeal that allows for partial school board input into administering the law is interesting, given how broad the rest of it was written.
“This is the state government telling local governments you do not have authority over your own spaces, but as a consolation prize, here's a little bit of leeway that you're able to sort of dictate yourselves,” she said.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from the Corporation For Public Broadcasting, supporting state government coverage in the state. Wyoming Public Media and Jackson Hole Community Radio are partnering to cover state issues both on air and online.
