Local Control Under Attack

Our far right legislators love to talk about how much they hate big government. Big government imposes its will on the people, Big Government takes away the voice of towns, cities, and states… yesiree Bob, they hate Big Gummint…until they love it.

By the time you read this, there will have been a hearing on HB 1749, a bill that would remove the right of NH cities or towns to establish their own gun ordinances. Your town doesn’t want target shooting on town land? Your city doesn’t want guns on town property? Tough luck. The libertea gundamentalists are going to eliminate local control, and give that control to the state. That’s right - the same state they complain about all the time.

According to this bill, “the general court will have exclusive authority and jurisdiction by statute over the sale, purchase, ownership, use, possession, transportation, licensing, permitting, taxation, or other matters pertaining to firearms, firearms components, ammunition, firearms supplies, and knives in this state.”

Take that, taxpayers of Anytown, NH. Your town doesn’t get to make decisions about guns, ammo, or knives, because the legislature controls your town’s decisions. You still get to pay taxes, but if you don’t want Bubba and his drunken cousin shooting targets in the park, that’s tough luck.  In fact, they’ll probably be able to shoot at the school playground too, because the bill opposes banning guns at schools, and schools are public property. Nothing goes together like small children and firearms.

It’s a bold power grab. Lead sponsor JR Hoell has never respected local control, and the bill reflects his disdain. Line I makes a point of saying that NH is not a home rule state. That NH has a long-standing (nigh on to sacred) tradition of local control is of no interest to the parade of far right activists that have signed on to this. Free State Project mover Ed Comeau of Brookfield is the only sponsor from the top half of the state, an area where folks are pretty serious about local control. There are no sponsors from Grafton or Coos County. There’s a hearing on Wednesday, and the executive session will follow the hearing. The vote will probably be scheduled for the following week. They don’t want voters to know about this until it’s a fait accompli. 

The other sponsors (from the bottom half of the state) include Representatives Al Baldasaro, John Burt, self-styled Constitutional expert Dan Itse, and James Spillane. Representative Michael Sylvia of Belmont is the other Free Stater sponsoring the bill. The founding document of the Free State Project calls for people to move to NH, take over and dismantle the state government, and then threaten secession. I trust I’m not the only one to see the humor in the would-be dismantlers of the state government, attempting to take local power away from municipalities and hand it to the state government.

They’re counting on the fact that voters aren’t paying attention, and if they hear about it at all, will interpret it as “nobody gonna tell me what I can do with my gun” and leave it at that.

The silence around this bill should concern all of us. There was endless publicity about “Constitutional Carry,” the name the out-of-state special interests came up with for eliminating the permitting process for concealed carry firearms. All the gun groups churned out continuous propaganda emails. The governor made it his very first legislative priority. To get a concealed carry license, a gun owner had to apply to the police chief in his/her town. The “Constitutional Carry” bill eliminated that step. It was the first step in eliminating local control. This latest move to disempower municipalities should come as no surprise.

It should come with rejection. This is the second attack on local control. If these radicals succeed, they’ll be further emboldened. What will be next? What will be the next erosion of local control engineered by the radical ideologues of today’s GOP? What do towns control that these folks hate? Hint: schools. I predict that will be next on their agenda.

There have been amendments proposed to the NH Constitution at different times to make NH a “home rule” state. Every time, the most vehement opposition comes from the liberty crowd. They hate big gummint, until they become the big government - and then they’ll do anything to protect and expand their power.  

For years we’ve heard that it’s the evil liberals who want big government to control every aspect of our lives. It turns out that it’s the NHGOP that wants their idea of big government to run our towns from Concord. It’s a brilliant strategy. The average Republican voter would expect this from liberals, but never from his own party.

Dear Republicans: your demise is being engineered from within. 

This was published as an op-ed in the January 12, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

When Freedumb Fighters Become Tyrants

HOUSE BILL 1749-FN

AN ACT relative to the state's authority to prohibit or regulate firearms and relative to the selectmen's authority to manage town property.

SPONSORS: Rep. Hoell, Merr. 23; Rep. Comeau, Carr. 5; Rep. Itse, Rock. 10; Rep. Sylvia, Belk. 6; Rep. Burt, Hills. 39; Rep. Spillane, Rock. 2; Rep. Notter, Hills. 21; Rep. Baldasaro, Rock. 5; Rep. McConnell, Ches. 12; Rep. Wallace, Rock. 33

COMMITTEE: Municipal and County Government

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ANALYSIS

This bill revises the law on the state's authority to prohibit or regulate firearms, firearms components, ammunition, firearms supplies, and knives.  The bill also renders the selectmen's authority to manage town property subject to the provision of RSA 159:26.

STATE OF NEW HAMPSHIRE

In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand Eighteen

AN ACT relative to the state's authority to prohibit or regulate firearms and relative to the selectmen's authority to manage town property.

Be it Enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives in General Court convened:

1  Legislative Findings and Purpose.  The general court finds that:

I.  New Hampshire is not a home rule state.

II.  Municipal ordinances and regulations regarding firearm regulation may differ from municipality to municipality which may place a citizen in danger of inadvertently violating the law.

III.  A growing number of towns and local boards are violating RSA 159:26.

IV.  The issue is a growing problem as in the last 6 months, the following events have transpired, all of which violate RSA 159:26:

(a) The board of selectmen of the town of Milford has banned target shooting on town land.

(b) The city of Lebanon school board is attempting to ban firearms in or on school property and at school events that take place on non-school property.

(c)  The Lebanon police department has pledged to enforce the illegal gun ban enacted by the Lebanon school board.

V.  It is in the best interest of the citizens of the state of New Hampshire for the resources of local units of government to be used to enforce current law and not to waste time enforcing decisions that are in clear violation of statutes.

VI.  Repealing and reenacting RSA 159:26 to clarify the intent and further, to include penalties, will prevent these violations of state law.

2  Firearms, Ammunition, and Knives; Authority of the State.  RSA 159:26 is repealed and reenacted to read as follows:

159:26  Firearms, Ammunition, and Knives; Authority of the State. 

I.  The general court shall have exclusive authority and jurisdiction by statute over the sale, purchase, ownership, use, possession, transportation, licensing or permitting, taxation, or other matters pertaining to firearms, firearms components, ammunition, firearms supplies, and knives in the state.  Notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, all delegations of legislative authority shall be by statute and shall explicitly state the extent and limits of the jurisdiction or authority delegated.  Except as otherwise specifically provided in statute, no ordinance, regulation, rule, or policy of an agency, political subdivision, committee, or other governmental unit of the state, or agent thereof may prohibit or regulate in any way the sale, purchase, ownership, use, possession, transportation, licensing or permitting, taxation, or other matter pertaining to firearms, firearms components, ammunition, firearms supplies, or knives in the state.  

HB 1749

Local control has always been sacred in NH. Past tense. Some municipalities are enacting gun ordinances for THEIR towns that the freedumb and libertea crowd disapproves of. This bill would remove local control and hand it to the legislature. 

These people (especially Free Staters Ed Comeau and Michael Sylvia) all bray about gummint tyranny - but vote them into government and they become the tyrants. 

JR Hoell - Who Needs Local Control?

GOP Favors Local Control Except When They Don't         h/t Tuck

We Have A Man Problem

When the story of Harvey Weinstein broke, the floodgates opened. All over social media, women were talking about their experiences with sexual harassment, with the #MeToo hashtag making the rounds. Years (decades) of stories and outrage were expressed. After a few days of that, some men began to be very uncomfortable. They began by getting defensive. Some moved on to make accusations that some of the women were surely lying. This is why women don’t come forward. They aren’t believed. 

Every woman has a story of harassment, often beginning in childhood. A family friend or a relative might have groped her as a child. She might have been a teenager who was groped by the father of the children she was babysitting for. It might be the story of a boss with a hands problem, or a violent story of date rape. It might be an experience she had while working in a restaurant. In a business where customers directly pay a worker’s salary, the worker is forced to put up with a great deal of foolishness in order to get  their pay, also known as the tip.

Hot on the heels of revelation after revelation of bad behavior by wealthy, powerful, men came the shooting in Texas. A man went into a church in a small town in Texas and killed 26 people. Devin Kelley’s past was filled with stories of violence and abusive behavior. If anyone had taken any one of the events seriously, he wouldn’t have been able to legally own a gun. He probably wouldn’t have been able to perpetuate a massacre.

There are a few things that mass shooters have in common. Since 1982, all but three of them have been men. Most of them had a history of domestic violence. It’s one of the best predictors of a potential mass shooter, but we don’t really take domestic violence all that seriously here. After all, it’s only women.

Here in NH, in 2014, three state legislators voted against Joshua’s Law, which made domestic violence a specific crime. JR Hoell was worried about “unintended consequences.” The other two were Frank Sapareto and Michael Sylvia. Rep. Sapareto was charged with assaulting his girlfriend’s two children in 2012. In 2017, he’s the Vice Chair of the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. As for Sylvia, during discussion of a Belknap County deputy who was accused of raping a woman in custody whom he was transporting, Rep. Sylvia commented, “You know what that tells me, that tells me he had time on his hands.” The real worry shared by all three was that domestic abusers would lose their guns. Because, of course, that  “unintended consequence” would be a real tragedy.

By now we all know the tropes: when a man who has skin color of a somewhat duskier hue starts shooting, he’s a terrorist. When it’s a white guy, he’s a lone wolf with mental health problems. We often discover that that the shooter has anger issues, and even more often that he has a history of domestic violence. The Las Vegas shooter was never charged with domestic violence, but he had been heard in shops being cruel and demeaning to his female partner.

One of the great mythologies of our country is the nuclear family, where mom stayed home and baked cookies for the kids while dad went off to work and brought home the paycheck. The single paycheck family went off the rails a long time ago. It takes both partners working at least one job apiece to keep a family financially afloat. That collides with the other mythology: the macho man. The myth of the hyper masculine man has been growing exponentially, and married into the gun culture family. Now the pervasive myth is that of the gun totin’ patriot with a gun who is going to save the nation (by himself, for he is a rugged individualist!) from gubmint tyranny with his gun.

Gun culture is all around us. In NH, our new governor’s very first order of business was a gun bill. In a state with crumbling infrastructure – his biggest concern was passing a law to allow any halfwit with a gun to carry it concealed. There are too many guns, and too many halfwits – and the halfwits are increasingly armed and angry. Too many of them regard women and children as their property. A woman trying to protect herself and her children by removing them from a violent situation is perceived as taking what is theirs.

We need to change our violent, sexist culture. We need to change our societal definition of manhood and masculinity. Given that so many men can’t even handle listening to the stories of women’s lives, I am not hopeful.

Published as an oped in the November 10 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Joshua's Law

This week the NH House passed SB 318, the bill known as “Joshua’s Law.” The bill establishes the official, stand alone crime of domestic violence. Up till now, abusers were charged with crimes from other statutes, such as simple assault, or criminal threatening. There was no legal distinction made between the beating of a spouse or a bar fight. This made the gathering of domestic violence statistics more difficult, and it also made keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers more difficult.

The need for good statistical information about domestic violence in our state is obvious. It’s important for the allocation of resources to both educate communities and law enforcement, as well as combating the crime itself. It’s also important to know if what we’re doing is working. It’s easy to gather statistical information about other crimes. This should be no different.

According to a 2012 Governor’s Commission on Domestic Violence, approximately half of the homicides in NH and 92 percent of murder-suicides are domestic violence related. The was named “Joshua’s Law” in honor of the late Joshua Savyon, a nine year old boy who was killed by his father in 2013. Muni Savyon killed his son and then himself. Savyon was an abuser who was angry with his wife for leaving him. He was also part of the Free State Project, a group of libertarians moving to NH to colonize the state, take over the state government, and then threaten to secede from the union. These are people who hate the government and blame everything on “the state.” Muni Savyon was angry at “the state”, too. In his suicide note he pointed out that his ex “believed in the state so much” but they couldn’t prevent him from killing his son, thereby leaving her alone to suffer the same kind of pain he had been suffering.

The reality is that we don’t care much about domestic violence on any level. Talking about it makes people wince. Law enforcement has a historic aversion to dealing with domestic violence crimes. We’ve certainly come a long way. Back in the 90’s I went to the Conway Police with a complaint about a stalker, and a disinterested officer told me there wasn’t anything they could do, since he hadn’t done anything to hurt me. The fact that this man had been the subject of half a dozen restraining orders taken out by half a dozen women didn’t move him. When I suggested that he seemed to be saying that he wouldn’t develop any concern until the guy killed me, he told me I had a bad attitude. On that much we agreed. I did have a bad attitude about stalkers. I still do. But that was 20 years ago, and I know that the Conway PD has evolved, and that Chief Wagner has worked hard to ensure that evolution.

On the federal level, the crime of domestic violence is what is called a qualifying crime, which means that the abuser’s guns will be taken away, and they will not be allowed to legally purchase guns in the future. When a person legally purchases a weapon, the store calls NICS, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, to determine the eligibility of the person who wants to buy the weapon. The NICS line is intended to keep weapons out of the wrong hands and ensure a timely transfer to a qualified buyer. This process has actually been slowed down in NH, because of the lack of a domestic violence statute.  The new law will streamline the process considerably. Responsible gun owners whose purchases should not be delayed will benefit from the new law.

This was bipartisan legislation. Sponsors included 6 Senators and 5 Representatives from both parties. One of the sponsors was our own Gene Chandler. Everyone could see the value in having a specific statute. In February, the Senate unanimously passed the bill. It passed the House this week on a vote of 325-3.

That’s right. Three representatives voted against this sensible legislation. All were men and all Republicans. They are Rep. Frank Sapareto from Derry, Michael Sylvia from Belmont, and JR Hoell of Dunbarton. I don’t know what Rep. Sapareto’s reasoning was. Michael Sylvia consistently votes against just about everything. (He, too, is a Free Stater.) JR Hoell is affiliated with a fringe gun group, the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, who proudly refer to themselves as “NH’s Only No-Compromise Gun Rights Organization.” In other words, they oppose any and all gun legislation. This seems to indicate that they are not interested in keeping guns out of the hands of violent abusers, which is truly a radical stance.

As luck would have it, I saw Rep. Hoell at the State House, and asked him why he voted against SB 318. He muttered something about “unintended consequences” and ran away. He was interviewed by WMUR-GOP, and expressed his concern for the term “intimate partner” which, in Hoellville, might be interpreted as having gone out on one date. The issue of violence didn’t appear to trouble him, only the idea that somehow the wording of that statute might prevent gun ownership. That an actual crime would have to be committed for that to occur did not concern him.

It’s unfortunate that we still have to have these discussions in 2014.

In the case of Joshua’s Law, however, the majority of our duly elected officials from both parties came together without rancor, to ensure greater accountability for abusers. This is how our citizen legislature is supposed to work. Be sure to thank and congratulate your state representatives. They’ve done a good thing.

* A letter that Rep. Hoell's fringe gun group sent out about SB 318 is posted below. 

© sbruce 2014  

Published as a bi-weekly column in the May 2, 2014 edition of the Conway Daily Sun