The New Hampshire Senate struck down legislation allowing for “gun-free zones” Wednesday, hours after a spate of walkouts and demonstrations at New Hampshire high schools to protest gun violence.
In a party-line vote, the Senate Education Committee voted down an amendment that would have allowed individual school boards to prohibit guns on school grounds and school buses.
The amendment – added to Senate Bill 357 by Sen. Martha Hennessey, D-Claremont – would have permitted the schools to override state law, which allows lawful gun owners to carry firearms on school campuses. Senators voted it down, 3-2, preventing its advance to the Senate floor.
The vote followed a hearing the day earlier that drew gun-rights and gun-control advocates out during a snowstorm, delivering heartfelt pleas. And it came in the aftermath of a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., last month, which has galvanized young activists across the country to call for greater restrictions on firearms.
Hennessey proposed the amendment to be added onto SB 357 – a drug-free school zone bill – following the Parkland attack.
But despite the national backdrop, committee Republicans on Tuesday said Hennessey’s proposal would not enhance school safety; it would, in fact, worsen it, argued Sen. John Reagan, R-Deerfield, the committee chairman.
“My feeling is that I am not going to support anything that will tell a bad person that this is a safe place to attack,” he said. A shooter bent on mass murder could be drawn to areas where he knew others would be unarmed, Reagan added.
Democrats saw it differently. Sen. David Watters, D-Dover, called the argument “inappropriate” adding that it distracted from “what we really can and must do to allow local authorities to decide that they can have a gun-free zone.”
“I’m disappointed,” he said, “because our children are crying out to us to do something about keeping their schools free of guns.”
Wednesday’s vote marks the end of the last major effort by Democrats to tighten the state’s gun laws this year. An effort to ban “bump stock” modifiers, which allow a semi-automatic rifle to mimic automatic fire, was pushed into interim study by the Senate last month, effectively stopping its progress.
But Watters pointed to the outcome of that bill as promising nonetheless: By putting it to study instead of killing it, the Senate kept the issue alive, he argued. Recent support for a ban by President Donald Trump could make that interim study more productive, he continued.
Meanwhile, efforts are underway in the state government to address safety concerns at schools – without restricting guns. On Tuesday, Perry Plummer, the state’s Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said that the Department of Safety is reviewing updated active shooter response plans for schools and plans to ramp up lockdown drills for law enforcement and teachers.
And Wednesday saw the first meeting of a new school safety task force convened by Gov. Chris Sununu, a group comprising teachers, law enforcement, state officials and others.
Announcing the task force, the governor highlighted a set of his own priorities to mitigate the threat of gun violence, including strengthening background checks, youth mental health services and early warning systems. The list contained no efforts specifically aimed at gun control.
“At the end of the day, there is one goal we all share: the safety of New Hampshire’s students,” Sununu wrote in a letter to the task force. “If we cannot put our children on the school bus and know they are safe, nothing else matters.”
(Ethan DeWitt can be reached at edewitt@cmonitor.com, or on Twitter at @edewittNH.)