Guest Post by NH State Rep JR Hoell - what happened during the SB244 hearing today - Granite Grok

Guest Post by NH State Rep JR Hoell – what happened during the SB244 hearing today

Dear Friends,
Today was the “hearing” in the Senate.  The entire hearing was intentionally setup to make it appear that this bill has support, however the gun owners in the state have a much greater voice and if we stick together we can stop this legislation.   The email below answers many of the questions that have been raised about this bill.

Regards,
JR

——– Original Message ——–

Subject: Senate committee holds farce of public hearing…
Date: Wed, 15 Jan 2014 03:42:11 +0000
From: Scott A. Krauss, Vice President, NHFC <alerts@nhfc-ontarget.org>
Reply-To: Scott A. Krauss, Vice President, NHFC <alerts@nhfc-ontarget.org>
To:

 

NHFC: New Hampshire's Only No Compromise Gun
                  Rights Organization
Dear JR,

NHFC President Jon Evans has been warning you about the dangerous anti-gun bill, SB 244.  There was a farce of a public hearing today at the State House and anti-gun activists were out in force to push this bill.  They were even joined by an attorney who claimed to represent firearms manufacturers.  Yes, the firearms manufacturers are conspiring with anti-gun activists to take away your Second Amendment rights based on the subjective opinion of a shrink!

When you contact the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee you may wish to ask them why they allowed Senator Carson to run a biased one sided hearing.  You should also ask her why she denied State Rep. JR Hoell (who is the NHFC corporate secretary) an opportunity to speak before he was forced to leave for another hearing.

The House and Senate have a long precedent of allowing bill sponsors to testify first, followed by elected State officials and then followed by citizens.  Last to testify has historically been lobbyists who are paid to be there.  Unlike the citizens and our almost volunteer state legislature, the lobbyists are on the clock and actually making money while sitting in that hearing rooms.

Stepping away from a long established tradition of allowing Representatives and Senators with busy schedules to testify first, the Chair called on a lobbyist to follow the bill sponsor in a coordinated effort to make it appear to the media that there was support for this legislation.  The effort was so blatant that others who attend hearings noted the departure from the standard committee practice.

We have also learned that at least one anti-gun group took issue with a recent alert sent by our friends at Gun Owners of America advocating the defeat of SB 244.   That alert was written by the General Counsel to Gun Owners of America, longtime New Hampshire resident, Michael Hammond.  Mr. Hammond is a strong supporter and friend of the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, Inc.

For those of you who enjoy reading all you can find on a bill or enactment, with as much detail as possible, Mr. Hammond sent us a response to the criticisms and asked that we distribute it under NHFC letterhead.   I have included it below and I repeat Jon Evans’ request to call and email legislators and demand that they vote SB 244 “inexpedient to legislate”.  We can still win this battle but we need you to double your efforts and call and email Senators, please forward to your friends and family. 

New Hampshire Senate Judiciary Committee:
Chair Senator Sharon Carson: (603) 434-2489
Vice Chair Senator Bette Lasky: (603) 888-5557 or (603) 315-1924
Senator David Boutin: (603) 203-5391
Senator Sam Cataldo: (603) 859-1089
Senator Donna Soucy: (603) 271-4151

Senate President Chuck Morse: (603) 271-2111

Click here to send them all an email.

You should also call Senator David Watters, (603) 969-9224 and the co-sponsor, Representative Jeffrey Goley, (603)626-6659 tell them to stop trying to take away the Second Amendment rights of people who have not done anything wrong.

Click here to send an email to BOTH Senator Watters and Rep. Goley

You should also call or email your own Senators.  Click here to find your Senator.

Thanks for your continued support.

In Liberty,

Jonathan R Evans, Signature
Scott A. Krauss
Vice President – NHFC

NHFC: New Hampshire's Only No Compromise Gun
                  Rights Organization

January 13, 2014
MEMORANDUM

FROM:    Michael Hammond, Dunbarton, New Hampshire
(For information purposes – General Counsel to Gun Owners of America)
RE: Response to the Response to our Opposition to Anti-Gun Legislation, S.B. 244

S. B. 244 is an anti-gun bill.  Various groups have explained, at length, what is wrong with it.

We have tried to avoid turning this into an attack on other groups by name.  But one other group is persisting in its attacks on us and our opposition to S.B. 244 — and is trying to defend this indefensible bill.

The following are our responses to their most recent misrepresentations:

MISREPRESENTATION #1:  Opposition to S.B. 244 by a variety of groups is “typical over-the-top “the sky is falling”” opposition.

RESPONSE:  I’ve been pretty much near the center of national pro-gun strategy for about 35 years.  I killed the RICOization of firearms in 1981, negotiated and managed McClure-Volkmer for Jim McClure, led the opposition to post-Columbine “gun control lite,” drafted legislation creating the armed pilots program, the ban on a Brady Law gun tax, and the ban on a Brady Law gun registration scheme.  Most recently, the New York Times Magazine has credited me (through GOA) with squashing another group’s efforts to pass Toomey-Manchin.  And these are only a tiny few of dozens of other legislative initiatives.

If there is one thing I have learned in that time, it’s that, if proposed legislation can be abused in the hands of anti-gun officials, it probably will be abused.  Barack Obama has no problem ignoring the clear language of statute (see, e.g., 18 U.S.C. 923(g)).  He has no problem exploiting the tiniest loopholes to do things like banning shotgun importation.  To pass bills which contain foreseeable loopholes is the height of folly.

MISREPRESENTATION #2:  GOA refuses to mention that certain other groups support this anti-gun bill.

RESPONSE:  At least one of those groups did a notorious photo-op at the White House with Bill Clinton in support of his anti-gun agenda.  But GOA has agreed not to blast other groups by name, just because we believe they are supporting anti-gun legislation.

I think our record speaks for itself:  Other groups tried to pass 90% of Bill Clinton’s anti-gun agenda, which we succeeded in killing.  Other groups negotiated with Chuck Schumer to pass the Veterans Disarmament Act (AKA the NICS Improvement Act of 2008) in the expectation that this would stop further calls for gun control.  Other groups tried to broker a deal on Manchin-Toomey.

We opposed all of these, and believe history has vindicated us.

MISREPRESENTATION #3:  “… at no time does GOA say SB 244 DOES create disqualifiers…”  [sic]

RESPONSE:  This is just not true.  Let’s start with my mother with Alzheimer’s who had a guardian appointed pursuant to RSA 464-A.  Although BATF’s unconstitutional and statutorily unsupported regulations lay the theoretical groundwork for turning her into a prohibited person, it is S.B. 244 which accomplishes that.

Ditto, police and firemen with PTSD, seniors with Alzheimer’s, people who have been diagnosed with ADHD, etc.

Guardianship and involuntary commitment are a theoretical issue for those who attack us, but we have had personal experience with these statutes.

In fact, supplying names to NICS of persons who should not be and are not otherwise covered by 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4) does turn them into prohibited persons.

People without experience would not know this, but, regularly, we get e-mails from people who are not, in our opinion, prohibited persons under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4), but who are now prohibited from purchasing guns, getting concealed carry licenses, and so forth, because a state overinterpreted this section and, in our opinion, illegally sent their names to NICS.  This is exactly what S.B. 244 would do.

MISSTATEMENT #4:    “… if you’re disqualified, you’re disqualified whether or not the dealer is told so by NICS…”  [sic]

RESPONSE:  This may be true with respect to felony convictions, but it’s not true with respect to MOST 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4) issues.  150,000-175,000 veterans have been made prohibited persons PRECISELY BECAUSE THEIR NAMES HAVE BEEN SENT TO NICS.  They were not prohibited persons because they had a traumatic experience in Baghdad, or because they consulted a VA counselor.  Rather, what made them prohibited persons was when that counselor sent their names to NICS.

MISSTATEMENT #5:  Says our attacker:  “Good luck with” assuming the courts will enforce 18 U.S.C. 924(a)(2).

RESPONSE:  I do assume the courts will enforce the law.  This is why I — personally — wrote the law this way.  And, if you want to know why there are almost no 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4) prosecutions (or, for that matter, other 18 U.S.C. 922(g) prosecutions), this is why.

MISSTATEMENT #6:  “But if a person is wrongfully denied under NICS when their records don’t show a judicial disqualifier under federal law, there is now a simple appeal process to reverse the NICS entry.”

RESPONSE:  It is hard to believe that the writer has ever attempted to correct an erroneous NICS entry, much less attempted to do that in a case where there is legal ambiguity.

We receive complaints with regularity from people who try to invoke the Brady Law rights, only to be brushed off by the FBI.

Furthermore, we have discussed this issue with the state’s top pro-gun attorney, and it would take $10,000 for a gun owner with such a grievance to walk through her door.  [And, incidentally, lest our attackers have any doubt about who the state’s top pro-gun attorney is, we are talking about the counsel to the New Hampshire NRA affiliate.]

MISSTATEMENT #7:  “Pro-Gun New Hampshire’s General Counsel, attorney Evan F. Nappen, currently charges approximately one-tenth that amount to restore rights for those with CRIMINAL convictions under New Hampshire annulment statutes, which we hope will be mirrored for mental health disqualifiers in the relief portion of SB 244, if properly amended.”

RESPONSE:  You know, don’t you, that the expungement of a criminal conviction is fairly clear-cut, compared to the dueling psychiatrists you may confront when removing an 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4) disqualifier?

MISSTATEMENT #8:  ” the effect of SB 244 is just to comply with federal gun laws already on the books.”

RESPONSE:  That’s what the VA says as well.  But sending my mother with Alzheimer’s to the FBI’s gun-ban blacklist is not “just complying with federal law.”

MISSTATEMENT #9:  “[Our attackers] suppor[t] an amendment that makes large, comprehensive, and critically necessary changes that will, if adopted, allow for relief which currently does not exist in New Hampshire, to finally help thousands of people who otherwise could not have their rights restored.”

RESPONSE:  P.S.:  That relief has not been needed because, up until now, New Hampshire has not been faced with a proposed law which would potentially send the names of tens of thousands of its citizens to the FBI on the pretext of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4).

MISSTATEMENT #10:  “[Under (U.S. v. Rehlander and U.S. v. Small ),  three-day emergency commitments under RSA 135-C:27 are not lawful disqualifiers under federal gun law…”

RESPONSE:  I assume this is a different U.S. v. Small from the one I’m familiar with, because it really doesn’t say that at all.

But you understand, right, that, even if that were true, passing a statute saying they are changes all of that.  As for declaring this statute unconstitutional under Heller, even an incompetent attorney would understand that, due to dictum on page 54 of Heller, that decision has been determined to be inapplicable to virtually every anti-gun statute that was challenged under it.

MISSTATEMENT #11:  “Most people think that the NRA has some pretty good lawyers.”

RESPONSE:  You know, right, that I was an attorney for the NRA and was their go-to attorney in the Senate for over a decade?  (We left amicably so I could run for Congress.)

SUMMARY:  I appreciate that Mr. Nappen feels I do “some” wonderful work.  Among the “wonderful” things I have done is to draft an alert encouraging our members to fund one of Mr. Nappen’s lawsuits, even after he had launched a nasty attack on me.  I would hope that he would, belatedly, realize that I come at this with a lot more legislative experience than anyone he knows.

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