New Hampshire Republicans overturn State House gun ban
Back in the early Spring of 2009 New Hampshire lawmakers were debating a bill which would have reaffirmed our state’s 10 amendment rights and the session was eagerly watched by many proponents of the bill from the gallery. Many of these people openly–and perfectly legally–were carrying their weapons. As the bill went down to defeat, the supporters of this bill became quite vocal before peacefully leaving the proceedings.
When the state legislature reconvened in December of 2009 the Democrat controlled Joint Legislative Facilities Committee quickly moved to ban all firearms from the state buildings. But yesterday the same committee, now controlled by a new Republican majority, reaffirmed the second amendment and overturned the ban by a vote of 10-1–it goes without saying that the one dissenting voice was the lone Democrat on the committee.
The people who showed up back in the Spring of 2009 carrying their weapons did nothing wrong except that they chose to exercise their second amendment right, but evidentially that was enough for the Democrats to decide to punish all gun owning Americans by designating another gun free zone–which as Rep. Al Baldasaro reminded everyone during the debate on repeal is nothing more than a “killing zone.”
This may have been the defining moment of the debate:
After Carol Backus of Manchester testified that she had safety concerns about allowing guns in the same place as schoolchildren, committee member Sen. Tom De Blois, a Manchester Republican, questioned whether forbidding guns was actually safer.
“Is there a police officer . . . in the room right now?” he asked. When no one came forward, De Blois asked Backus, “If a gunman walked through the door right now with every one of us unarmed, how many of us would escape?”
This was just a small step forward in the fight to regain our liberties which have slowly been eroding under Democrat control for many years, and while this is only a first step we are finally beginning to move in the right direction in New Hampshire. There is much work to be done, but yesterday’s vote reaffirming our right to keep and bear arms was just the beginning. Now if the Republicans would reintroduce the bill which led to this gun ban in the first place–the bill to reaffirm New Hampshire’s 10th amendment right–we would really be taking a major step in the fight against an overreaching, intrusive government.
America's Watchtower 
I have to admit I was rather shocked to hear that people were allowed to bring guns into the state house, I am fairly certain we can’t do that here in Virginia. Can you carry into a court building as well?
I was shocked because as long as I have lived in Virginia, you could not bring weapons anywhere on government property, so to think otherwise sort of jolted me, lol.
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You cannot bring a gun into a courtroom. This has had an interesting history; guns were allowed in the state house until 1996 when they were banned until 2006. In 2006 the ban was repealed and then banned again in 2009 before being allowed again yesterday.
On a side note, there was supposed to be a vote on overturning a ban that has been in place since 1985, if this ban is repealed members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives will be allowed to carry weapons onto the House floor. I have not been able to find out whether of not this vote took place today.
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I tell you, if I could handle the cold, I would be moving back to NH! I am so excited to see what is going on! And if it can happen in NH, it can happen anywhere!
I think NH may just lead the rest of the nation … by example! 🙂
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Things are turing around here and it is exciting to be a part of!
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Excellent Steve. Your state is leading by example. I would love to see more states step up and stand up for the constitution and exercise their authority granted to them by the 10th amendment. This is a great win Steve. I’m smiling :o)
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And this morning a learned that the Republicans also won a vote that would allow House members to carry on the floor of the House, repealing a ban that had been in effect since 1985.
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“Killing Zone” is right. That’s what Virginia Tech was.
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Exactly! It is amazing to me that liberals just can’t seem to put two and two together on this issue.
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Great news. Hopefully this will start a trend with other states. Some of them anyway.
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That would be nice but I wonder how many states are paying attention to our lone bastion of freedom up here in the Northeast.
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There is much truth in the quote by Senator Tom De Blois. We can not deny that there have been many times when a gunman walked into a room of unarmed people and opened fire. If even one of them had been carrying a weapon and been trained how to use it, how many lives could they have saved? Instead, how many lives were lost. Our country needs to seriously look at the way we view guns. They have been portrayed as intrinsically bad for a very long time, but they are anything but. They can be the thing that saves your live and protects the people you love.
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There was part of Be Dlois quote which I did not use, but sms it all up nicely.
“Only criminals carry guns in gun free zones.”
Why is it that people think that allowing there to be areas where only criminals will have weapons will make us safer? It does not make sense to tell the criminals “you can commit violent crime here without fear of the victim having recourse.” The liberals simply can’t or won’t put two and two together on this issue.
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You morons will have the blood of the Arizona Congresswoman on your hands. The only consolation is that you’ll eventually all shoot each other.
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I didn’t realize she was in the New Hampshire State House today.
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@ bdbd – WTF are you talking about? Why will we have her blood on our hands. I didn’t shoot her. Do you support driving a car? So if anyone dies in a car crash is their blood on your hands?
You call us morons and then you make the completely moronic statement that we’ll eventually all shoot each other. Seriously? If that was the case, how come we haven’t done it already? I mean, its not like gun laws are getting less stringent than they were in the past. Oh I know, its because you are freaking idiot.
Keep your weak-kneed, progressive rantings to yourself, or at least bring some substance to a discussion before you decide to vomit your kool-aid on people who prefer their drinks a little a stiffer.
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Steve neglected to mention that it was a GOP legislature that banned guns in the State House 35 years ago, when Speaker Marshall Cobleigh was threatened by a gun wielding member of his own party.
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“bdbd wrote:
You morons will have the blood of the Arizona Congresswoman on your hands. The only consolation is that you’ll eventually all shoot each other.”
lol. stop giving sensible democrats like me a bad name by ranting on this site about; ‘how gun owners will eventually murder eachother and spill the blood of all the innocents of the world’ <–nonsense …based on evidence no doubt conjured from the shallows of your petty mind =/.
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