Gov. Sununu signed another pile of bills on Friday, including HB1178 “prohibiting the state from enforcing any federal statute, regulation, or Presidential Executive Order that restricts or regulates the right of the people to keep and bear arms.”
I apologize for not getting to it sooner. I (sort of) took the weekend off. But it’s signed, according to this press release, though Gencourt has yet to update the bill as chaptered law. And the news cycle itself is partly to blame.
The veto of the ivermectin bill got a lot of local attention, while nationally, the Republican support of a Federal gun control bill sucked up a lot of bandwidth. But shouldn’t a bill at the state level that pushes back on that intrusion be worthy of some attention?
It is, and it isn’t.
HB1178 ended up being a step in a better direction, but as Mike Maharrey from the Tenth Amendment Center pointed out, there’s a big hole in it.
The original language would have created a strong prohibition against state or local enforcement of federal gun control. But an amendment created a loophole that will significantly narrow the practical effect of the law even if enacted. …
As amended, HB1178 would then only ban state and local enforcement of federal gun control, when the enforcement actions are done for federal gun control alone. But in practice, that almost never happens.
State and local enforcement support is almost always part of some other operation in conjunction with the feds — usually prosecution of the unconstitutional war on drugs. The amendment will allow this to continue unabated. In effect, the amendment says if local police are working with the fed to enforce anything else along with federal gun control, they can do it as they have been all along.
That may be why we didn’t see fireworks or alarm bells from the Lefty Media moments after it was signed. The original bill was excellent. We had high hopes for the legislation and pushed to get it passed. What we ended up with is better than nothing. Again, a step in the proper direction. But now that Biden has signed off on the latest knee-jerk federal gun control legislation, with ‘republican’ help, can or will HB1178 slow their roll.
Probably not. And yes, there was some local press before the Governor signed it. Most of it was misleading, but now that it’s the law, will ‘The State” protect law-abiding citizens targeted by a partisan Federal authoritarian regime?
Unless you can convince a judge that the constitution does prohibit the government from violating your due process rights as enumerated in the 5th Amendment, you may be out of luck. Our “justice” system isn’t exactly known for that.
And while Gov Groomer has been good at signing laws to protect gun rights, his cabal of swamp rats has been more interested in adding federal strings than cutting them.
Will the AGs Office, never a reliable defender of either the US or New Hampshire Constitution, interpret HB1178 to protect Granite Staters or just the ones his boss wants protected? Use it to set examples for the rest of the people who might not agree with everything the state government’s been doing.
I can picture it, especially when, as the years pile up, Governor Sununu seems more focused on appeasing the DC donor and chattering classes than defending the sovereignty of his state and its citizens.
So, why sign it? He probably had the Senate water it down so he could. It looks good until you dig beneath the surface and discover there’s not much “there” there. And in the hands of a Democrat governor, nothing there at all.
But it’s on the books. If we can hold on to the Legislature, perhaps they can fix it in the next session. Give it back its teeth.
Update | The day after I wrote this stories started appearing in the local press.
