During this last legislative session, bills antithetical to civilian firearms ownership were all killed. Some died before they were even drafted, some only at the last possible opportunity, but dead nevertheless. Either way, what’s important is that the gun control crowd led by Governor Hassan lost every bid to restrict our rights. We thought we had won; well, at least for this session anyway.
Turns out, we thought wrong.
It appears that the NH Department of Safety – with no authority, no legislation, no administrative rulemaking process, no light of day or public input – has made a change to its Pistol / Revolver License Application that makes it virtually impossible for anyone to be granted a license.
On Pistol/Revolver Application Form DSSP85 (Rev 08/14), the Department of Safety added the following question to its application:
“Has any state or federal agency or licensing authority ever claimed that you are prohibited by law or regulation from possessing a firearm?”
Your only options are to answer “yes” or “no”.
Sounds innocent enough, right? But think for a moment – “…ANY state or federal agency or licensing authority…”
Could “any” state be Alaska? Or Florida?
Could “any” federal agency be the Office of Management and Budget? Or the National Archives?
Could any licensing authority be the Kansas Department of Motor Vehicles? What about the NH board of “Barbering, Cosmetology, and Esthetics”?
What about “claim”? How would you know? How COULD you know what someone or something “claimed” about you if you weren’t made aware of it? If you weren’t notified?
When I was engaged late last year and earlier this year in fighting HB 1589, one of the reference documents I used was the NH Pistol / Revolver License Application DSSP85 (Rev 3-11) downloaded directly from the Department of Safety website at 2:37 pm, on January 18, 2014. Guess what? That new question was not there…
Silly me, here I am thinking, gee, the Department of Safety must’ve submitted a revision and it gotten approved through the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rulemaking (JLCAR) sometime between January and August 1st of this year. Having been exposed to the administrative rulemaking process that all OTHER agencies follow, I pulled up JLCAR’s website and, oh my, found there was no reference ANYWHERE to proposed OR adopted changes to the Pistol /Revolver License Application form in the department agendas, minutes or findings.
So yesterdat morning, I drove into Concord to pay a call on the folks at Administrative Rules and ask, “What gives?” “Where’s the paper trail? Under what legislative authority was this unbelievably horrible change made?”
Unfortunately, JLCAR’s computer system was down but Scott Eaton, the nice man who runs Administrative Rules, was kind enough to sit down with me to try and solve the mystery.
Despite that lack of computer access, we were surprised to find there are NO rule administrative rules for Resident Pistol /Revolver Licenses; only rules for Non-Resident Pistol /Revolver Licenses. Oddly enough, the Non-Resident application, revised in August of 2013 under JLCAR’s Administrative Rulemaking, does NOT contain the question:
“Has any state or federal agency or licensing authority ever claimed that you are prohibited by law or regulation from possessing a firearm?”
After a pleasant discussion, Scott recommended that, in light of the fact they had no computer access, I head over to the Department of Safety to ask “What gives” once more and see if I could get the answer directly from the horse’s mouth.
Sure enough, Commissioner Earle Sweeney sat down with me and, after a while, said he could understand my fear that no one could possibly answer the “new” question and that he would personally look into how this change to the application came about. He was headed into a staff meeting but took my phone number and email address, telling me I’d hear from him this week.
I thanked him and headed back to JLCAR to let Scott Eaton know what I’d learned. Unfortunately, Scott was tied up but I got to sit down with Michael Morrell who pointed out that two years ago, RSA 541-a was changed to place ALL department and agency forms under rulemaking authority. Specifically, the very definition of “forms” was changed and now:
“…means a document that establishes a requirement for persons outside the agency to provide information to an agency and the format in which such information must be submitted.”
Even more contrary to the manner in which the Department of Safety appears to have changed the form, in 2011, RSA 541-a had been changed to provide for a specific process for the:
“Adoption of Forms. – An agency may adopt a form as defined in RSA 541-A:1, VII-a by incorporating the actual form by reference or by setting forth the requirements of the form in rules adopted according to the procedures in this chapter. “
Let me repeat that last phrase: “…according to the procedures in this chapter.” Hmm.
I thanked Mr. Morrell and told him I would study those provisions of RSA 541-a when I got home. And just out of curiosity, I stopped by my local police department on the way and asked for a Pistol / Revolver License Application. The nice lady behind the bullet proof glass tore one off a big pad of them and handed it to me. HER version had the same offending question but HER revision was dated 07/14, a month before the (Rev 08/14) version currently posted on the Department of Safety website. How did that happen? How many revisions are out there? Just when was this change made? On whose authority? Inquiring minds want to know. So you can imagine how very much I am looking forward to hearing from Commissioner Sweeney this week.
Perhaps the Department of Safety don’t need no stinkin’ rules or maybe it thinks it can just write its own. We shall see…
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