by Richard Olson
Last Monday House Bill 1161, a bill repealing a local the licensing requirement (N.H. RSA 159:8) to sell pistols and revolvers, was vetoed by Governor John Lynch, despite having passed both the House and the Senate. Governor Lynch acted for a very exclusive special interest group, implementing the will of this unelected and unaccountable cadre, The New Hampshire Association of Chief’s of Police, supplanting their will and personal agenda over the citizens of New Hampshire. HB 1161, sponsored by Representatives Dan Eaton (D) Stoddard (a former Police Chief, also) and David Welch (R) Kingston, sought to eliminate the local licensing requirement as duplicitous and unnecessary, additionally citing its potential for abuse by local governments.
This is not the first time the NHACP has given the proverbial back-handed slap to the citizens its member-Chiefs serve. In 2006, NHACP President Nathaniel “Chip” Sawyer appeared on MyTV in Derry with this author where = the debate at that time was Senate Bill 318 which sought to remove the present legal duty of citizens under present law, to retreat in the face of an unlawful criminal attack. The NHACP’s stated position in opposition amounted to people not having the sound judgment to understand the use of force and such a law would result in a tide of assaults. Chief Sawyer did not robustly debate my positions because he didn’t have to. He knew full well that he had Attorney General Kelly Ayotte and Governor Lynch all sewn up so the bill was going nowhere, as is the case with this present legislation.
Handgun retailers across the state are, first and foremost, Federally Licensed. The requirements to become a licensed dealer are not simple, easy or inexpensive. The holder of an FFL (Federal Firearms License) has a cornucopia of regulations to comply with, some of which are confusing at times and the dealer is strictly liable for compliance. FFL’s are subject periodic audits by agents of the Federal Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Agency. The local ATF Office is located in Bedford, NH.
So what might be the wisdom in repealing this law? Simple. Its duplicitous and unnecessary. The requirements set forth in 159:8 are already required under the ATF rules and Federal laws. Despite only three conditions set forth in the law, Many communities set separate and distinct requirements such as the installation of expensive alarm and monitoring systems that effectively bar sales in a community. For example, in Manchester city ordinances, A7 93.18 Protection of Certain Businesses states in part,
(A) Any business or any individual, partnership, corporation, or other entity engaged in selling, leasing, maintaining, servicing, repairing, altering, replacing, moving of any firearms, explosives, or ammunition including but not limited to all federal firearms licensed dealers, to be sold, leased, maintained, serviced, repaired, altered, replaced, moved, or installed in or on any building, structure or facility shall be required to install and maintain an Underwriters’ Laboratory approved burglar alarm system covering all accessible access points or a combination of interior devices, including but not limited to photoelectric, ultrasonic, microwave, proximity, and sound devices. The method of alarm transmission must be a direct wire or a supervised line to an Underwriters’ Laboratory approved central station or a method of transmission to an Underwriters Laboratory approved central station approved by the Chief of Police in keeping with industry standards.and further states, In making a determination of the necessity for an alarm system, the Chief of Police shall consider such factors as the history of the unlawful entries against the particular establishment and the type of business and the nature and value of the inventory of the particular establishment.
Firearms dealers have a vested interest in protecting their inventories from theft and loss and understand the importance of theft deterrence within the community, but such ordinances serve to dictate how much a dealer will spend on an alarm system, thereby effectively banning retail sales in communities with costly requirements.
RSA 159:8 mandates that, a) The business shall be carried on only in the building so designated; b) mandates display on the premises of the license; and, c) bans the sale of pistols and revolvers to felons.
Bedford Police Chief David Bailey told the Union Leader’s Mark Hayward, “local licensing applies to some hobbyists who aren’t covered by federal law… “While Bedford has no firearm retailers in town, it licenses a few hobbyists…” I haven’t a clue what the Chief is talking about! I’ve pondered considerably what circumstance the chief might be referring and I come up empty. Perhaps the Chief has created his own definition of “dealer?”
This is a good example of “why” the law needs to be repealed. Here, we have a police chief telling us the law is necessary because it covers “a few hobbyists,” but I would submit few are clueless as to what that exactly means. I would submit there exists no legal basis for What Chief Bailey does in Bedford, hiding behind some confabulated term such as “hobbyist.” The most recent separate example of where I saw the word “hobbyist” used was by a leftist anti-gun liberal commenter in the UL reader comments section.
The veto of this legislation speaks to larger issues in New Hampshire. First, The government supplants the will of the legislature for that of himself and his favorite special interest groups. Second, For a bill to pass both the house and the Senate then to be tanked by a group of police chiefs is telling about the enduring mentality of empire building and attendant bureaucratic behavior. And lastly, the Chief’s, many of which are highly educated, some with law degrees, perhaps think the average citizens they serve are not sophisticated enough to discern between “duplicate and overlap” and protecting a facet of power arbitrarily wielded in deciding a federally regulated commercial activity at a local level.