Second Amendment advocates will gather outside the State House on Saturday as the Women’s Defense League of New Hampshire holds its fourth annual gun rights rally.
The organization, formed by a group of Granite State women who wanted to train and educate others about firearms, speaks out on behalf of Second Amendment issues that come before the state Legislature.
The rally comes as concerns over gun violence have spiked, following last month’s shootings at a high school in south Florida that left 17 people dead. In the wake of that incident, there have been renewed calls at the state and federal levels for tougher gun laws, as well as a push to strengthen school security and possibly arm some properly trained teachers and other educators with concealed weapons.
“Although the rally was planned in early January, the timing is perfect, in an unfortunate way, due to the many new calls for gun control against law-abiding citizens,” said Kimberly Morin, the group’s president. “Granite Staters have a long history of fighting for their Second Amendment rights, as seen with Constitutional Carry, and they aren’t about to stop now.”
The rally comes four days after the GOP-led state House of Representatives – mostly along party lines – voted down a new push by the minority Democrats to advance new gun control legislation. The bill – introduced by House Democratic Leader Steve Shurtleff of Concord – would have barred most people under age 21 from buying any type of firearm and would have banned bump stocks – devices that mimic firing on an automatic weapon.
Early last month, the Republican majority in the state Senate sidetracked a bill by the minority Democrats that would have also banned bump stocks.
The fight over firearms is now front and center in this year’s gubernatorial campaign, as the only declared Democrat running for the Corner Office last week introduced his proposals to reduce gun violence and school shootings.
Former Portsmouth Mayor Steve Marchand’s seven point plan includes calls for universal background checks on all firearms sales, banning bump stocks and a ban on military style semi-automatic weapons.
Speaking to supporters Friday outside the Dover city hall, Marchand pointed out that federal law bans students from bringing firearms on to school property, but a 2003 state law says adults cannot be banned from doing the same thing. Marchand supports allowing local communities to prohibit firearms on their school grounds.
“If there’s ever an example where local control applies, it should be in something as seminal as whether or not firearms are allowed in your schools, or for that matter, other public buildings,” he said.
Democrats in the state Senate recently introduced a measure that gives local school boards the authority to ban weapons in designated safe school zones in their districts.
Republican Gov. Chris Sununu opposes that idea.
“If you start allowing the local jurisdictions to simply make their own rules as you go, you’re creating a huge problem. You need either state or federal law to dictate the carry provisions,” Sununu said in an interview on NHPR last month.
At his event, Marchand also highlighted that “two-thirds of all deaths in this country at the barrel of a gun are suicide.”
And he said in New Hampshire over the last two years, 93 percent of gun deaths were suicides.
“That’s why I’m a big fan of 48 hour wait periods,” he said, as well as so-called “red-flag laws.”
In the wake of the Florida school shooting, there have been new calls for such “red flag laws,” which allow law enforcement to seize the weapons of those believed to be a danger to themselves or others. Five states currently have these gun-violence restraining orders.
Sununu isn’t sold on such laws, recently saying “I get a little wary of just giving a judge the arbitrary power to go and take your guns because he says it’s okay to do so.”
Marchand said that “a lot of people have been touched by people who have committed suicide or had attempted it. And it gets personal quick. And it’s nothing about gun rights and protecting the Second Amendment.”
Marchand’s also urging licensing for those carrying a concealed weapon. The first major bill Sununu signed into law last year eliminated those requirements.
A group of gun owners and gun rights supporters were in the crowd when Marchand first introduced his plan last week at an event outside city hall in Lebanon. Some of them showed up after the urging of the state GOP.
Marchand took questions from them.
“Did I change all their minds? I did not in full disclosure. But a few of them, yeah,” he said.
Sununu has said he believes New Hampshire has sound gun laws. And he’s insisted that “the federal level is the appropriate place” to implement any new laws restricting firearms.
Marchand disagreed, telling reporters that “I’ve been around long enough to know that if the cornerstone of your strategy on policy is to wait for federal action, that is basically a long form way of saying you support inaction. You support status quo. And being governor is not a spectator sport. It is a participatory activity. And if you are not prepared to lead, then you should not be governor.”
Sununu highlighted his administration’s aggressiveness in “making the investments in the communities, in the schools, for safer schools.”
And he’s touted the effort the state made “a year ago to make sure we were providing safer schools for our kids. So we’re in some ways very ahead of the game.”
The governor’s pointed out the state grants that school systems across the Granite State are using for surveillance systems, secure doors and other aspects of safety planning. Sununu also detailed what he described as the “huge investments in mental health” that his administration made last year to help diagnose adolescents with mental health issues.
“It’s really a multi-pronged approach that we have to take to make sure our kids are going to school in a safe atmosphere and we’re providing resources to those who need some help,” Sununu said recently.
Marchand criticized that strategy, saying it basically turns a school “into a fortress.”
“That cedes the argument. We know we can reduce the risk of gun violence. I don’t want to wait until the gun gets on the property to develop public policy,” he said.
While gun violence is upmost on the minds of Americans and Granite Staters right now, there’s no guarantee the issue will remain that way through the November election – especially in a strong Second Amendment state like New Hampshire.
“It will be an area of clear distinction between the candidates. I don’t know that it will be the dominant issue,” said Dean Spiliotes, civic scholar in the School of Arts and Sciences at Southern New Hampshire University.
“I don’t know that it’s going to drive the political conversation here,” he added.
But Marchand predicted that “the issue’s not going way” and vowed “to keep pounding the drum.”