House Bill 1711 has been marketed as a sensible bipartisan compromise bill to keep firearms out of the hands of once lawful gun owners deemed mentally unfit. It passed the State House with the help of 25 Republicans, but the GOP Majority Senate held hands and tabled it last week.
The bill would have had New Hampshire join other states that provide mental health data as part of any firearms background check. Governor Sununu liked it so much that he said he’d sign it, but he’ll have to wait for a majority of NH State Senators to vote to take it off the table and put it back in play. That seems unlikely with the session winding down. But why would Sununu sign it?
Despite his numerous flaws, he’s been a good doobie on firearms rights. It may not make up for his other failures, but our policy has been and continues to be to ‘thank them’ when they do good and ‘spank them’ when they do wrong. Signing HB1711 into law would be a bad idea.
The bill would, in limited circumstances, work like a red flag law for persons,
(a) Adjudicated as not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity;
(b) Adjudicated as incompetent to stand trial and found by the court to be a danger to themselves or others pursuant to RSA 171-B:2, 135-E:5 or 135:17-a; or
(c) Involuntarily committed to a mental health facility pursuant to RSA 135-C:34-54.
It sounds sensible, and advocates claim that this narrow restriction is common sense gun law, but no matter how you slice it, this is the proverbial camel’s nose. It opens a door that future legislatures will see as a rubber stamp to push the entire red flag camel into the tent.
The types of mental health designations will expand first, and eventually, the court and the lawyer will disappear in the name of public safety. They will say we can’t wait for due process of any kind – act first, process later. It’ll happen because that is the progressive goal, and HB1711 is an effort to get that ball rolling.
Were it to pass, we would also look forward to an army of state-affiliated therapists swelling to find suitable diagnoses to disarm otherwise ordinary and law-abiding citizens.
Remember, the deep state, in both DC and Concord, thinks that disagreeing with them is a sign of mental illness.
Public Safety
Public safety is the Marcia -Marcia- Marcia of progressive overreach. But if it is such a huge concern, perhaps we should focus on teaching proper safety and (for lack of a better term) carry etiquette. Instead of confusing kids about their gender at the earliest age possible, teach them firearms handling and safety. We used to do it and the nation was safer for it.
Inculcate responsibility and respect. It’s the one thing we haven’t tried in recent decades, and we should because I can’t think of a single place where red flag laws and every other restriction the mostly Democrat gun grabbers have imposed have made the local community safer. Property crime, violent crime, assault, rape, and murder all go up. What makes them go down? Well, if you look at the states with the longest records for low crime, New Hampshire being near the top of that list, they are also the freest states for gun owners. New Hampshire is. That’s not a coincidence.
And HB1711’s bipartisan good intentions aside, while people with mental health issues are a risk, letting legislators down this path is riskier, and once they take the rights, they are not going to give them back.