This is a curious debate to me. The issue is whether local officials and more specifically local school officials can establish rules (in this case prohibiting firearms on school grounds) where the State Law does not grant them such authority.
The obvious answer should be no.
New Hampshire is a Dillon’s Rule State.
Under Dillon’s Rule, a municipal government has authority to act only when :
(1) the power is granted in the express words of the statute, private act, or charter creating the municipal corporation;
(2) the power is necessarily or fairly implied in, or incident to the powers expressly granted; or
(3) the power is one that is neither expressly granted nor fairly implied from the express grants of power, but is otherwise implied as essential to the declared objects and purposes of the corporation.
The legislature reserves this power for itself so I’m not surprised the AG has determined that School gun bans are unlawful, but wait, there’s more!
Rep. Dan Wolf, R-Newbury, … said the issue needs to be further studied by the Legislature, especially because state law appears to conflict with federal law.
The federal Gun-Free School Zones Act bans weapons within 1,000 feet of a school.
But the state Attorney General’s Office said last year that local police departments don’t have the jurisdiction to enforce federal statutes.
Meanwhile, state law provides the state Legislature with the sole authority to regulate guns and knives, meaning school districts and municipalities cannot set their own rules, even if they conform to the federal law.
Almost everyone wants to “fix” this which should send up more than a few red flags. Progressives will see it as an opportunity. They will invoke “The Children™” to put any size, shape, or color shackle on the second amendment they can. Anyone who objects will be painted as wanting children to die (which is mean and evil unless it is in the first 40-weeks of life and then it’s a right).
What’s a Dillon’s Rule state to do? As little as possible.
The ideal solution is to keep the existing rules in place and use that as an opportunity to do the one thing that will, more than any other, protect children from becoming victims of a mass shooter. Make sure there are several people in every school building at all times who are trained and armed and make sure no one outside of administration and perhaps the local or state police have a clue who they are.
Gun free zones are magnets for unhinged Democrat shooters. Ensuring everyone is disarmed, and everyone knows that is the dumbest “solution” to the problem, and it’s not surprising that is the one Democrats prefer.
As for the Feds, I’m not familiar enough to know the exceptions (if any) in the federal law so if the state needs or wants to do anything at all it may be to find them or request a workaround or waiver to take the bullseye off our schools.
It’s a good idea that will get turned on its head to keep kids and educators vulnerable, but that is how progressives like their serfs.
And before you set to writing your venomous reply first answer this. If someone wants to assault the occupants of your ideal pastoral public school when the evil-doer crosses the threshold how many people in that building will be armed?
Just the bad guy.
No one will have equal or superior force until it arrives from somewhere else.
The sooner shooters are confronted with equal or superior force the more lives are saved and in some cases every life but that of the shooter.
If they know they won’t have the advantage, they are more likely to find someplace else run by liberals, preferably that advertise how easy it will be to kill the people assembled there.
Stop making it easier for bad guys.
