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The Right to Carry a Gun

Huckleberry Muhammad

By Huckleberry Muhammad,
in Politics & Religion

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NM11046 All-American

NM11046

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Real examples that have happened here in New England that have made me laugh and laugh because ... irony.  

 

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N.H. lawmaker drops gun on floor at start of hearing for full day kindergarten 

Monitor staff 
Published: 1/12/2017 3:58:14 PM

State Rep. Carolyn Halstead made an unexpected entrance to a House hearing on full-day kindergarten Thursday.

When the House Education Committee member removed her backpack and took a seat at the head table, her loaded handgun came dislodged from her waistband and fell to the floor, she said. The firearm did not discharge and the hearing proceeded with little notice, onlookers said.

Halstead said afterward she was embarrassed and unsure whether some children seated in the front row saw.

“I apologize,” the Milford Republican said. “I don’t normally carry a backpack. I guess that’s not a good combination. Lesson learned.” 

House Speaker Shawn Jasper issued a statement later, saying he had met with Halstead and “impressed upon her that, while no harm came from this incident, her lack of control is unacceptable.” 

 

Lawmakers and the public are allowed to carry guns inside the State House and neighboring Legislative Office Building, where most committees meet. It’s legal in New Hampshire to carry concealed firearms with a license, which Halstead said she has. 

The gun’s safety lock was on, she said, and it has never dropped before. The two-term representative takes defense classes and said she plans to work with her instructor to find a better place to carry her concealed gun.

“It’s not something I knew would happen, and if I did, I wouldn’t have carried it that way,” she said.

Hopkinton Rep. David Luneau, the sponsor of the bill to fund full-day kindergarten, said he heard a thump during his testimony, but kept on speaking. 

It’s not the first time a lawmaker has dropped a concealed gun at the State House. Former Rep. Kyle Tasker made headlines in 2012 when his M1911 pistol fell from its shoulder holster to the ground at the start of a House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee meeting. 

The hearing on full-day kindergarten lasted several hours, and is poised to be a major issue this session. The bill seeks to increase state aid to school districts that extend their kindergarten programs from half to full days. More than half the 176 school districts – including Merrimack Valley, Pembroke and Pittsfield – already have full-day kindergarten, according to the state Department of Education.

The state only pays for a halfday, but Luneau said it should be financially helping those that opt for a longer day. The estimated cost to the state would be an estimated $14.5 million, according to the bill’s fiscal note. Republican first-term Gov. Chris Sununu has voiced support for full-day kindergarten in communities that want it. 

Halstead said her gut reaction to the bill is to oppose it. 

“I am not one of those who believes the earlier you put a child in learning programs the better,” she said. “We should not be making kids go to school (all day) at 5-years-old.”

 

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Kyle Tasker, New Hampshire State Legislator, Drops Gun During Committee Meeting

By John Celock

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A Republican member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives who once posted a comment on Facebook about shooting at police officers accidentally dropped one of his guns on the floor at the start of a committee meeting Tuesday morning.

State Rep. Kyle Tasker (R-Nottingham) explained to onlookers that he had donated blood that morning and the effects caused him to drop his gun at the start of a House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee meeting. The committee was meeting to amend an abortion bill pending in the Legislature. The gun did not fire.

State Rep. Steve Shurtleff (D-Concord), a member of the committee, said that he was sitting three seats away from Tasker in the committee room when he heard “a clang” and saw that the gun was on the floor. Shurtleff said Tasker routinely wears two guns in a shoulder holster to legislative meetings.

“I was glad it was his blood that he was giving and not someone else’s,” Shurtleff told The Huffington Post.

Reporters in the committee room confirmed the account. Josh McElveen , a reporter for WMUR posted on Twitter that Tasker had said the blood donation left him “loopy.” Tasker has not returned a call for comment.

The incident comes a year after the Tea Party-controlled House voted to allow guns in the Statehouse and the nearby Legislative Office Building. Shurtleff, a former deputy U.S. marshal, said he has been told that as many as 45 legislators, more than 10 percent of the full 400-member House, carry firearms to sessions.

“There are a couple of other members of our committee, about three or four, who are armed at any time,” Shurtleff said.

The criminal justice panel was meeting to amend an anti-abortion bill, passed last week by the full House, to remove a felony provision. The original text said that a doctor who willfully does not follow the law’s provisions — which includes telling a woman that abortion causes breast cancer — could be charged with a felony. The committee passed an amendment downgrading the crime to a misdemeanor.

Last year, Tasker came under fire for a post on the House Republican Caucus’ Facebook page about the state’s deadly force bill that involved shooting at police officers, a statement which he said was taken out of context.

 

“When a police officer points his firearm that’s not gonna make me feel threatened? If I’ve been trained to respond to that with force am I justified in blowing a cop away because I’m quicker on the draw, and he already pointed his firearm at me? Police are just citizens with badges and all laws should apply equally,” Tasker wrote, according to WMUR.

Tasker later issued a statement saying that it was part of an “intellectual discussion” of the bill and that he does not advocate shooting police officers.

Tasker was first elected in 2010 and works for a family company that builds wells. Among his legislative proposals are bills to decriminalize small-level marijuana possession; to confirm the immigration status of those detained by the police; and to regulate barbers.

Legislators who carry guns to work are not limited to New Hampshire. Last year, an Arizona state senator received media attention when she carried a small gun in her purse on the legislative floor two days after the shooting of former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in Tucson. The senator also pointed the loaded weapon at a reporter during an interview about the gun.

 

And so, of course:

 

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Despite ban, N.H. lawmakers say they will continue to carry guns in the State House

  • lawmakersgunban-cm-010719-ph01

    Second Amendment supporters gather outside the New Hampshire Statehouse on Wednesday, Jan. 2, 2019, in Concord, N.H., ahead of a vote whether to ban firearms in Representatives Hall. Rules on allowing firearms have flipped back and forth depending on which party has the majority. Democrats, who took control in November, hope to restore the ban. (AP Photo/Holly Ramer) Holly Ramer

Monitor staff
Published: 1/7/2019 2:28:15 PM

A group of Republican state representatives are vowing to disobey a new rule banning firearms on the House floor, calling it “illegitimate” and dangerous.

In a letter to the Monitor , Auburn Rep. Jess Edwards and seven other members of his party denounced the new rule as unconstitutional, arguing that representatives had no obligation to follow it.

“We view Rule 63 as illegitimate,” the group wrote, referring to the new change, which passed the House last week. “We view Rule 63 as having the perverse effect of increasing the risk to everyone in the House gallery and chambers.”

(Read the text of the letter: New Hampshire House will not be a soft target)

They added: “Due to our willingness to exercise our constitutional rights and because any attempt to disarm House members is foolish public policy, we reserve the right to refuse to comply.”

 

In its Jan. 2 session – the first of the new year – the newly-Democratic  House voted to ban firearms and other deadly weapons  from the House floor, gallery, and anteroom.

 Representatives are expected to turn in any weapons to State House security before entering the House floor on voting days, according to Shurtleff. Any representatives in defiance of the rule may be ejected or even arrested, the rule states.

The amended rule, a restoration of a policy last seen in 2014, set off a firestorm from the outset. In passionate speeches Wednesday, Republican representatives pointed to death threats they had received from members of the public and argued banning firearms would make them unsafe.

Democrats, meanwhile, countered that the presence of any firearms on the House floor constituted a threat, and that the ban would reduce the risk of dangerous accidents. 

In an interview Monday, Democratic Speaker Steve Shurtleff declined to comment on what action he might take in response to the letter, but said that the office was ready to enforce the new rule.

“I think any negative action invites a negative consequence,” he said. “So as always, we always hope for the best. There are methods to deal with those actions that are contrary to the running of the New Hampshire House.”

But he added that he had faith that the letter-writers would not follow through with the promise to violate the ban.

“I would not think – you know, knowing the members involved, they’re all honorable people,” Shurtleff said. “They’re members of Republican leadership. I cannot believe that they would do anything that would be contrary to the New Hampshire House.”

Before and after debate Wednesday, some opponents of the ban vowed to independently ignore it if it passed, but Monday’s letter was the first concerted and public effort to do so.

In laying out their case, the representatives invoked the June 2017 shooting at a Congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Va., in which a politically-motivated gunman took aim at Republican legislators, and critically wounded then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise.

And they argued that while the House has the ability to pass rules, it “does not have the authority to strip Representatives of their rights.” 

Any rule that does that, the lawmakers wrote, is a violation of lawmakers’ “natural rights” and should be ignored.

“There are times when the acts of a majority are so repugnant to the dignity of the individual that the act itself is cast asunder,” the representatives wrote. “The act removes itself from the realm of legitimate government authority and is to be ignored, if not openly held in disdain.”

But Shurtleff rejected the premise, declaring the House rule in line with other forms of gun restrictions. 

“The Supreme Court’s already held under the Second Amendment that certain bodies have the right to ban firearms, including legislators and jails, courts and airplanes,” he said. “So that’s already been adjudicated and there’s already court decisions on that. We don’t really follow natural rights as an argument.”

In their letter, the representatives made reference to the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, in which hundreds of unarmed civilians were murdered by U.S. soldiers. The incident provided a teaching moment for disobeying “unlawful orders,” the New Hampshire lawmakers argued. 

And they said their resistance to the rule was meant as a deterrent for would-be shooters. 

“Contrary to popular belief, the N.H. House will NOT be a gun-free zone,” the lawmakers wrote. “Any violent extremist who thinks that we’ve become a soft target needs to reassess the situation.”

Edwards was joined by seven other Republican representatives: Alicia Lekas, of Hudson; Al Baldasaro, of Londonderry; Greg Hill, of Northfield; Howard Pearl, of Loudon; Mark Warden, of Manchester; Chris True, of Sandown; and Jeanine Notter, of Merrimack.

 

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ZRod Offensive Coordinator

ZRod

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3 hours ago, Decoy73 said:

The recent church shooting in Texas illustrates the uselessness of “gun free “ zone laws. I don’t agree with everything that Texas does, but they were correct in changing their previous law concerning places of worship. 

And yet 2 people are dead, one of them a security gaurd. The other security gaurd took the gunman down. And watching the video it's alarming how slow on the draw many people were that were not security.

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teachercd Head Coach

teachercd

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It is great that the good guys won out (for the most part) in this instance but like others said, people were still super slow to act and that is normal, that is how it should be, it should be scary for Joe Normal Guy to act in a situation like that...

 

Conceal Carry is weird to me.  I have a hard time looking at it as a "I want to save the day" type of thing and more like "Check me out, I am carrying a gun" type of thing.

 

But, it is not going away and if I had been at that church I would have been happy that Doc Holliday had been there too.

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Decoy73 Travel Squad

Decoy73

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11 minutes ago, BigRedBuster said:

Doesn’t seem like that to me. 
 

But, two people died. 
 

How can that be prevented?

Do you think the shooter would have stopped shooting after the first two if there hadn’t been anyone else with a gun in there?  

 

Defensive carry isn't meant to stop a shooting. It’s to defend yourself and others when they otherwise would essentially be sitting ducks to maniacs like this.  Is this really that difficult for you to understand that?

 

The only way way to prevent shootings is to get rid of all guns and that is impossible. 

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