(On Jan. 8, the “Monitor” published an op-ed by eight Republican representatives who said they would not obey a new rule banning guns in the New Hampshire House. Here are some of the responses we received to that column and related stories.)
Those of us at the State House earlier this month bore witness to a routine exercise in leadership when the House voted on its rules for the upcoming session. The new Democratic majority proposed a rule prohibiting firearms on the House floor, in the anteroom and in the gallery. The Republicans, in the minority, argued against the rule.
Nothing new here – just Democrats working to limit gun rights and Republicans fighting to retain them. New session, same stuff.
The rule passed pretty much along party lines. Eight Republican members have since written a letter to the editor of the Monitor stating that they will violate the rule and continue to carry their guns in the House.
The rule the Democrats put forward is actually quite narrow. We’re talking about 400 men and women in a state of 1.43 million and only while they’re at work. But what it represents, of course, is much, much bigger. Gun rights and the Second Amendment are, after all, the GOP’s sacred cow. It’s hard to think of any Republican leader who doesn’t embrace Second Amendment absolutism.
We Dems have a few sacred cows of our own, of course. Our favorite? Abortion rights. Call it our Second Amendment. While you try to come up with a Republican leader who will bend on gun rights, I’ll rack my brain for a Democrat willing to speak in favor of limiting a woman’s right to an abortion.
We could both be here a while.
But what if we had the guts to change the conversation? What if a few Republicans started to acknowledge that gun violence is a big problem and that legislative solutions like waiting periods and mandatory training might help? How would it play out if a few Democrats brought up the idea that while abortions should be safe and legal, perhaps there could be limitations in the late stages of pregnancy?
If we poked our sacred cows like that, the conversations would certainly not be routine. If both sides would stick their necks out just a little, we could have a much more interesting dynamic. Instead of leaders being safely entrenched in their respective positions, new opportunities might reveal themselves.
Granted, this path requires true bravery. It requires a willingness to be exposed and an awareness that to achieve progress, we must all be both willing to be wrong and to recognize when we are wrong. If we could find some common ground on these two issues, guns and abortion, left and right could start to actually work together on the other issues of our day, like the lack of good middle class jobs, climate change, immigration and campaign finance reform. Maybe we’d even start to trust each other a little bit.
When I was a candidate for office, people often asked me why I was running. Now that I’m in office, it seems appropriate to turn the question around. Why did people vote for me? I believe that one reason was because voters want elected officials to represent our best hopes for our communities, to put forward ideas to help us be the best versions of ourselves. To that end, I am willing to challenge the status quo, to ask hard questions, and to call BS on both sides when they’re wrong. Perhaps a conversation about both parties’ sacred cows is a good place to start.
Rep. CRAIG THOMPSON
Harrisville
Roll over, Thoreau
With regard to the handful of Republican reps and their opinion piece “New Hampshire House will not be a soft target” (Monitor Opinion, Jan. 8): Nonsense.
Aside from the already noted blindness of their argument to the specifics of the Heller decision (see Peter Fairchild’s “My Turn” on Jan. 7 and mine from last March), aside from the bizarre inequivalence of their reference to My Lai, and aside from their hypocritical, disingenuous sidestepping of “getting bogged down in a legal discussion” (the Legislature that was good for them when Republicans were the goose is not good for them now that they’re the gander?) – their invocation of Henry David Thoreau would have that curmudgeon of the other Concord rolling over in his grave.
From “Civil Disobedience”: “It is not a man’s duty … to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong; … but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it. … The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war (My Lai?) by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war.” And “if (the evil) is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice … then, I say, break the law.”
Thoreau broke the law by refusing to pay tax to the government, which allowed slavery – “I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave’s government also”; so “Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.”
Thoreau’s reasoning and morality were several orders of magnitude beyond Rep. Jess Edwards’s and his band, but if that’s the logical standard being invoked, I have three possible Thoreauvean courses of action to recommend: 1) Break the law, carry a firearm to the State House, then go quietly to jail. 2) Refuse to be a part of the government whose Rule 63 so offends you: Resign from the Legislature. 3) Or, as Thoreau put it, “all machines have their friction; … it is a great evil to make a stir about it. … Let it go, let it go.”
All of this is such a petty little tempest. The Republicans changed the rule when they gained the majority and allowed firearms. The Republicans lost in the latest elections; the Democrats are, in their fair turn, changing the rule. Perhaps when Republicans next regain control of the Legislature they should ban elections, so that they won’t ever have to risk the consequences of a majority that disagrees with them.
In the meantime, your protestations of moral superiority ring painfully hollow, and pale by comparison to those whose invocation of Thoreau carried real weight, such as Gandhi and King.
CHIP MORGAN
Hopkinton
House lawbreakers
Tuesday’s Monitor reports that some legislators, also known as lawmakers, have decided that they will ignore the new ban on carrying firearms into the chamber. Lawmakers as lawbreakers. Great, just great.
SCOTT ROBART
Andover
Rep. Jess Edwards of Auburn avers that new Rule 63 prohibiting firearms on the State House floor will increase the risk to everyone on the floor and in the gallery (Monitor Opinion, Jan. 8). Given the huge proliferation of firearms in this country the past 18 years, why is it that the number of people killed each year by firearms is steadily increasing? I thought these additional guns were going to make us safer.
JOHN V. KJELLMAN
Henniker
Perhaps pistol-packin’ New Hampshire legislators planning to defy the House weapons ban could answer some questions.
Do you support the rule of law? Or does that apply only to rules you personally endorse? Does this “obey only the laws you like” principle apply to everyone, or just elected officials? Does majority rule apply only when you’re in the majority? Please help ordinary citizens understand.
Surely the Legislature’s job is to make rules and laws. If we’re all free to ignore laws we disagree with, why make any? If lawmaking is pointless, why have a Legislature? New Hampshire could save more than $42,000 a year in legislative pay alone by disbanding a body with no purpose. Factor in mileage, the cost of running elections, plus the expense of turning bills into laws, and our state could really clean up.
Of course, if legislators float above the law while binding citizens to it – may I, an ordinary citizen, stroll into the House with an assault rifle slung across my back? – we can also dispense with our Constitution. Police? Why bother? Whoever’s got ammunition left when the smoke clears is the one whose orders we’ll be following.
Majority rule has always posed problems for democracies. No matter how decisions fall, there’s always at least one group grumpy enough about the outcome to make trouble. The question for we the people is whether we want those troublemakers armed.
JANE HUNT
Concord