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Comment by deedubaya | Hacker News Reader

I live in Idaho, so I can speak to this case specifically.

Idaho is a very rural state. Most of the population is in Boise, but every district in the state has a representative. This means that the wills of the city goers can't overrule the wills of the larger state as a whole, even thought it has the majority of the population.

Now, something to know about rural America is that it tends tomostly care about two things -- religion and the right to bear arms (this is a generalization, of course). As a result, the elected officials typically campaign on those points, and everything else is glassed over. Thusly, many of the elected officials serve special interest groups under the guise of a bible and a gun, and the rest doesn't really matter. It's not lack of intelligence, but lack or priorities other than these.

And that's how Idaho residents put up with these types of laws being put in place.

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> religion and the right to bear arms (this is a generalization, of course).

Minor nit (sorry!) but rural folks mainly want limited government – a lot of their other arguments stem from that. They tend to not like power or authority and want to be left alone. (Perhaps to commit their own power abuses!)

Yes, they also want that. I'm speaking mostly about Idaho, where the religious influence is very strong in the southern half (Mormonism) and the neo-nazi influences in the northern half (Ruby Ridge).

Most will say limited gov and then in the same breath talk about how Christianity should be enforced as the nation's official religion, and how 2A laws should be expanded upon, both requiring bigger gov.

What gun laws do you think Idahoans, of all people, want to see expanded?

> What gun laws do you think Idahoans, of all people, want to see expanded?

Any law pertaining to firearms, because most believe the "liberals" are coming for their guns, so the further right the laws are, the more ground there is to fight.

For example, Idaho recently passed a "Constitutional Carry" law which allows anyone who legally owns a firearm to conceal it, without any training or permits. Previously, a background check and conversation with your local sherif was required to obtain a Concealed Weapon License. This barrier was low, and I'd never heard of anyone being denied, but apparently it was too invasive. I exercised my right to this prior (licensed) and after the change, and feel it wasn't a logical change.

So previously, there was a law that said "it is a felony to carry a firearm in public, except as follows...", or something to that effect.

Now there is no such law.

I sincerely don't understand how you can view the removal of a law as "bigger government."

You're right, it's not a good example of bigger government. I think I got sidetracked in my reasoning.

They always say they want limited government, but they also say they want government to control who you can marry, who you can have sex with, what drugs you can take, and what women can do with their own bodies. And they say these things completely oblivious to the hypocrisy involved.

I live in the south, in the heart of "limited government" country, and I voted Republican until the last election (but I was always more of a libertarian).

There are libertarians in rural areas who really want limited government--they exist.

But they are vastly outnumbered by cultural conservatives, who want to use the government to shape the country into a version of what they think existed in the 1950s.

Having lived the first 35 years of my life almost entirely in conservative states: "limited government" means "government won't bother you as long as you act like a good conservative, but once you stop acting like a good conservative all bets are off".

We're seeing this openly practiced in places like Missouri and North Carolina, where the state legislatures advocate for limited government right until the moment a city in the state passes something whose social implications they disagree with. Then, as if by magic, a new state law appears to override the city policy or strip away the city's power to have such a policy.

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