[Posted March 25, 2010, at 12:20 p.m.] Here is the current status of gun bills in the New Hampshire legislature.
First, the good news: HB1665, Jenn Coffey's Knife Rights bill, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 23 by a unanimous committee vote of 5 to 0; it had passed the House on February 17. The full Senate will vote on the bill next Wednesday, March 31; if it passes, it will then go to the governor.
The bad news is that HB1693, the bill to repeal the December gun ban in the State House, failed in the House by a vote of 191 to 167 yesterday, March 24, largely on party lines. As we reported earlier, last December the Joint Legislative Facilities Committee banned guns in the State House and Legislative Office Building (LOB). See the Nashua Telegraph article at http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/statenewengland/684532-227/house-sends-gun-ban-repeal-packing.html . If it's any consolation, the ban is just a rule and not a law, so you
cannot be arrested for violating the rule, only asked to leave; you can
be arrested, however, if you refuse to leave when asked.
In addition to the knife rights bill, two other pro-gun bills are in play: HB1161, to repeal the obsolete statute requiring town permits to "sell at retail pistols and revolvers," passed the House on February 17 and is waiting for a vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee. HB1147, to revise the statute about shooting in a "compact area" of a town, is in the Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee, with a public hearing not yet scheduled.
Review: Maybe the best news for this legislative session is that the two really bad anti-gun bills have been killed in the House. HB1654, which would have installed metal detectors at the entrances to the State House and LOB and made it a felony to bring in a gun. This bill was killed in the House on February 3 by a vote of 300 to 35. HB1635, which would have made it a felony to openly carry in any government building or "place" in the state, was killed in the House on March 17 by a vote of 256 to 33.
Finally, the two Firearms Freedom bills died in the House: HB1285 by voice vote on February 3, and HB1433 by a vote of 205 to 107 on March 8. These bills were modeled after the Montana law which declared that guns manufactured, sold, and used entirely within the state would be exempt from federal regulation. Several other states have similar legislation in progress (and Tennessee, as well as Montana, has enacted it into law), but -- like marijuana legalization in California -- the federal government maintains that it still has jurisdiction.