According to Firearm Chronicles
New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die,” a sentiment that many a Bearing Arms reader can relate to. After all, that’s all most gun owners really want, to live free. We don’t like the idea of the state taking away our rights, including our right to keep and bear arms.
For a long time, New Hampshire has been a rare beacon of freedom in the Northeast. They have lived up to their motto in most ways.
However, a bill recently passed out of committee would definitely require a serious examination of that motto.
Several dozen supporters and opponents squared off remotely Wednesday over red flag legislation that would permit the temporary confiscation of guns if a judge determines a person poses an “extreme risk” of violence to himself or others.
After a two-hour hearing, the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee voted, 3-2, in support of HB 687, which the House of Representatives approved in January. All three Democrats backed it. The two Republicans opposed it.
The full Senate is likely to pass the measure when it meets Monday.
Margaret Tilton, a retired physician from Exeter, said such a law would have permitted her family to take a gun away from her son, who suffered from depression and shot himself to death in 2017.
Before his death, Exeter police officials convinced him to turn over a gun he had bought earlier. He went back to a gun store and bought a second handgun, which he used to commit suicide, she said. “The evidence was there. It was a repeated pattern of behavior,” Tilton told the Senate Judiciary Committee.