Somehow, New Hampshire has defied progressive-probability. For years we’ve had some of the lowest crime rates, and the lowest homicide rate, in the nation, despite never (EVER) giving the feds the names of people diagnosed as mentally ill (a subjective set of circumstances all its own).
How the hell is that even possible?
(Union Leader) The names of nearly 12,000 mentally ill people were added to the FBI’s background check system last year when Massachusetts and Vermont changed laws in an effort to keep guns out of the hands of dangerously mentally ill people, according to a gun-control advocacy group.
Citing FBI figures, the group Everytown for Gun Safety said Massachusetts turned over 11,541 records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in 2015. Vermont submitted 414.
New Hampshire is the only New England state that does not disclose records of dangerously mentally ill people to NICS.
The Bloomberger backed group Make Everytown Like Chicago For Gun Safety is itching to get New Hampshire to cough up a list to the feds, but is that even necessary?
I don’t think it is, and I don’t think they should, and here’s why. The risk that law-abiding citizens can be denied their constitutional rights based on an arbitrary decision by a bureaucracy guided by an anti-gun-culture psychiatric community with moving-target metrics (pun intended) is too great.
If even one person is denied their constitutional right to self-defense that is one too many. We must always err on the side of liberty. To do otherwise is to further court the unaccountable tyranny of a shadow government of the un-elected.
And as I pointed out in the opening, New Hampshire has managed to maintain remarkably low crime rates despite never needing to provide these sorts of details to anyone outside the state and a recent event involving one individual, who might not have even been on such a list in the first place, is not evidence of a problem in need of this solution.
