In what has become a perennial waste of time, New Hampshire House Democrats have placed yet another Legislative Service Request (LSR) “prohibiting possession of a firearm at a polling place.” This year’s popular blonde (with a penis and five o’clock shadow) is 2025-0360. Its sponsors are Timothy Horrigan, Suzanne Vail, David Meuse, Jodi Newell, Loren Selig
Last year’s effort, HB350, failed despite 144 Reps voting for it. The sponsors of that bill were Read (D), Hamblet (D), Meuse (D), Telerski (d), Eamon Kelley (D), Lane (D), Veilleux (D), Newell (D), Phinney (R).
There are some different names (Meuse and Newell are repeats), but the same intent: to ban the right to carry a firearm for self-defense … for no evident reason. As far as I can tell, there have been no poll-related incidents involving firearms. The only reason to do it is to handicap the right by making it more difficult to carry everywhere you go so that you don’t.
Related: Democrats are So Stupid That They’d Demand the Guy They Compare to Hitler Ban Guns
Like all location-based restrictions, it creates a false sense of security that invites aspiring mass murderers to take advantage of an opportunity. Gun-free zones equal force majority.
The official reason for trying to ban firearms at polling places is that it intimidates voters. Banning them “is a commonsense step our government can take NOW to put an end to this intimidating practice.”
Their thinking is that you can already ban things (electioneering, shirts, hats, ID, proof of citizenship), so why not guns? People need to feel safe when they vote, as if that would do it. And it’s a problem. Thirty-three states (including my own) do not prohibit firearms when voting.
The other left-wing reasoning you are likely to hear, and please God, let this come up in the hearing, is J6. The institutional movement to disarm people at the polls has flagged J6 as a reason, but none of the protests was armed unless the busloads of Federal “actors” in MAGA gear were carrying concealed – but they don’t count, do they?
They are “from the government” and are there to incite violence.
In other words, this is unnecessary legislation. There have been no incidents. Almost anyone who carries does so concealed (which you can do in New Hampshire without a permit to carry). So, there is no intimidation, real or imagined. Many polling places in New Hampshire are at public schools where federal law prohibits carrying unless you have a pistol permit.
In other (other) words, the only person likely to carry a firearm to a polling place with the intent to intimidate or harm would be a government employee or a citizen doing it without any regard to HB350 (had it passed) or the latest pointless effort.
I predict the latest iteration will come out of committee inexpedient to legislate and die a horrible, bloodless death on the House floor, where you are allowed to carry a firearm (when Republicans have the majority), and no one has been shot, not even Democrats who voted against the will of their caucus.
