Signs in Idaho city warns criminals: We’re armed

by: Sam Rolley
The city of Greenleaf, Idaho, wants visitors to know that it’s likely they’ll be met with an armed response if they attempt to victimize its residents. It’s posted signs announcing: “THIS IS NOT A GUN FREE ZONE.”
The small city of 846 people doesn’t have its own police force. That’s why in 2006 city leaders passed a resolution asking all residents to own a firearm and ammunition and to seek firearm training.
USA Today reported at the time:
After watching the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, Steven Jett, a city councilor in this tiny town founded by pacifist Quakers and carved between the Owyhee Mountains and mint fields, proposed a law.
Ordinance 208, passed by the City Council on Tuesday, asks Greenleaf’s residents who do not object on religious or other grounds to keep a gun in the home.

In a town of 862 residents, where an estimated 80% of the adults already own guns, the proposal hardly caused a stir. It went through weeks of public hearings and drew mild criticism from the pastor of the town’s Quaker meetinghouse.
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Greenleaf doesn’t really have crime, at least as most cities define it. The most violent offense reported in the past two years was a fist fight.
The police report at Tuesday’s meeting did relate an instance of almost-vandalism — a teen carrying a paintball gun on Halloween — except the incident occurred in Wilder, six miles down Idaho Route 19.

But the menace of high crime may be on the way, Jett said. Greenleaf is on the western fringe of Canyon County, a fast-growing suburb of Boise. As developers turn alfalfa rows into tract housing and hay bales give way to big box stores, Jett wants newcomers to know criminals will not be “comfortable” in Greenleaf.
With renewed calls from the left for more gun free zones in recent years, Jett along with two unnamed businesses in the area have donated five signs to the city to let the world know where its residents stand on the issue.
“Myself, as a city councilman, and apparently the rest of the City Council agrees that gun-free zones are targets,” Jett told the local Magic Valley news. “If you look at the shootings that have happened, they are gun-free zones. Schools, malls and recently churches. I want people to know that this is not a gun-free zone, and we are not a target.”