New Hampshire Constitutional Carry? Not Even Once…

CONCORD, NEW HAMPSHIRE — Following a series of disappointing measures instituted by Her Royal Majesty, Queen Maggie Hassan, a quite useless NH Senate was not able to overturn Her Majesty’s veto of constitutional carry bill SB 116.  SB 116 would have removed the antiquated and poorly written NH laws that require a person to get his permit from the town police chief or similar authority.

According to the Union Leader, the override vote was 14-10 — not nearly the 2/3rds required to overrule the Queen.

As the present law stands in New Hampshire, a New Hampshire resident has to go to his local police chief or issuing authority and complete a form.  The police chief does a background check and must issue a decision within 14 days of receipt.

What advocates of constitutional carry will argue — and rightfully so — is that this current set of laws has been on the books for 100 years and it unnecessarily infringes on a person’s ability to carry a concealed and loaded pistol in the State of New Hampshire.  Mind you, Maine got constitutional carry passed back in July.  Vermont has had constitutional carry arguably as long as Vermont has existed.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Massachusetts does not acknowledge New Hampshire, Maine, or Vermont’s right to carry into their state and likely never will. So for the purposes of whenever we’re discussing New England, we’re unfortunately going to have to leave Massachusetts out of such conversations.  It’s okay, I’m sure they’ll find a way to tax us for that.

So New Hampshire legislators saw their neighbor Maine was going constitutional and looked to their left and said, “well, Vermont has always been constitutional” and properly concluded New Hampshire should as well.  Brilliant!

Unfortunately, the one thing standing in the way is our very own Queen of the Shire, Lady Hassan of House Concordia (“Live, Freeze, and Die”).  And to be honest, at least she’s consistent — she’s struck down casinos, decriminalization of marijuana, and constitutional carry all in the same time frame.  So, she’s not a fan of anything new or exciting and really just wants to keep everything hunky-dory.  That’s why she was elected and pretty much runs unopposed.

The final rub is this — constitutional carry will not emerge as a winning issue until we have a constitutionalist governor, house, and senate in Concord.  The somewhat-good news?  Until then, our pistol permit application process is pretty easy by any standard of a concealed carry permitting process.