(H/T: Tim)
The Democrats are about to have hearings on HB 1635 and HB 1654; the first makes possessing a firearm or knife in any public building a felony:
No person shall knowingly and openly carry a loaded or unloaded pistol, revolver, or firearm or any other deadly weapon as defined in RSA 625:11, V, whether such person has a license under RSA 159:6 or is unlicensed, upon the person or within any of the person’s possessions owned or within the person’s control while inside a public building. Whoever violates the provisions of this paragraph shall be guilty of a class B felony.
The second is basically a regurgitation (albeit, more narrowly defined):
No person shall knowingly carry a loaded or unloaded pistol, revolver, or firearm or any other deadly weapon as defined in RSA 625:11, V, whether open or concealed or whether licensed or unlicensed, upon the person or within any of the person’s possessions owned or within the person’s control in the state house or legislative office building. Whoever violates the provisions of this paragraph shall be guilty of a class B felony.
Do the Democrats believe as they do in Britain? There, they have basically outlawed guns for anyone. They are now in the process if putting draconian laws in place to the point that even steak knives are going to be illegal for possession by the ordinary Brit (and are getting to go after "clubs" – mere pieces of wood).
Effectively – are the NH Democrats starting down the road that NH Citizens do not have the Right (nay, the obligation) to self-defense? NH’s own Mark Steyn has this story from Britain that all but screams "You are not allowed to defend yourself!!" (emphasis mine):
An Englishman’s Home Is His Castle Dungeon
The motto of the Canadian Mounties is that they always get their man. The motto of the British police is that they always get you. Frankly, it’s a lot easier:
The TV presenter and Marks & Spencer model Myleene Klass has been warned by police for waving a knife at teenagers who were peering into a window of her house late at night.
Klass was in the kitchen with her daughter upstairs when she spotted the youths in her garden just after midnight on Friday. She grabbed a knife and banged the windows before they ran away.
Hertfordshire police warned her she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an "offensive weapon", even in her own home, was illegal.
Klass’s spokesman, Jonathan Shalit, said the former Hear’Say singer was "utterly terrified" by the intruders and "aghast" at the police warning. "All she did was scream loudly and wave the knife to try and frighten them off," he told the Sunday Telegraph.
Is screaming loudly still legal? Or is that in breach of Health & Safety regulations? Most of the citizenry is, consciously or not, resigned to the reality that the British constabulary are the most monumentally useless in the developed world. But Her Majesty’s coppers find new ways to torment them nonetheless.
Protecting the guilty and punish the attacked.
My debate with Jim Splaine started with the question "Who owns who"? From this perspective, if one is not allowed to defend themselves against those that have evil intentions, we are no longer sovereign individuals – we are not citizens that have a Government but merely subjects to it.
Here in my rural hamlet, the distance between me and the police station is on the order of minutes – when help may very well require seconds. And the NH Democrats wish to put their ideology into law – and will disown the negative results.
