In the wake of the shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island last weekend, where two students were killed and several others injured by an attacker who’s still not been identified or taken into custody, Republicans in New Hampshire say its time that lawful gun owners be able to protect themselves on college and university campuses.
State Rep. Samuel Farrington, who’s also a senior at the University of New Hampshire, unveiled his campus carry bill on Wednesday alongside Republican House leadership; an indication that the legislation will receive the support of the GOP caucus, at least in the lower chamber.
If enacted, Farrington’s legislation would apply not only to the University System of New Hampshire — UNH, Keene State College, and Plymouth State University — but also to every other higher educational institution in New Hampshire that receives public funds. That includes private schools, like Saint Anselm College and Dartmouth College, which generally prohibit students from carrying weapons.
Saint Anselm College spokesperson Paul J. Pronovost said on Wednesday the college does not have a position on the “campus carry” legislation. Spokespeople for Dartmouth and other private colleges in New Hampshire did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the “campus carry” legislation.
One person who did have an immediate comment for the Boston Globe was Democrat State Rep. David Meuse, who whined that Republicans should be looking to ban semi-automatic firearms instead and claimed that “more guns on college campuses do not address the epidemic of gun violence,” but instead “endanger students and bystanders, forcing ordinary people to act as law enforcement and increasing the risk of being mistaken for a threat by the responding police.”
Violent crime, of course, is plunging across the country at the moment, and New Hampshire has typically been one of the safest states in the country for decades. New Hampshire’s gun-involved homicide rate in 2023 was about 1 per 100,000 people, almost half the rate in neighboring (and gun controlled) Massachusetts.
Meuse’s contention that campus carry would endanger students and bystanders might sound reasonable to some folks, but I think the lawmaker is failing to consider that if an armed student or professor draws their gun it’s because someone is already shooting at “students and bystanders” and they’re shooting to stop the attack. Yes, there is a possibility of an errant round injuring or killing an innocent bystander, but there’s an even greater potential for innocent bystanders to be shot and killed by the assailant actively trying to murder as many people as possible.
It’s also true that there’s a possibility a legally armed citizen acting to defend others would be mistaken for a threat by responding police. Of course, we’ve also seen unarmed homeowners shot and killed by police showing up on the scene of a home invasion or burglary. These tragic incidents are exceedingly rare, and shouldn’t be reason to deprive people of their right to protect themselves and others from harm.
Meuse, a former television reporter and PR flack who’s in his third term as a state representative, states on his website that one of the reasons he ran for office was “we have people in power who think guns should have more rights than people,” so his anti-gun idiocy is nothing new.
Republicans have a governing trifecta in New Hampshire, controlling both chambers of the legislature as well as the governor’s office. That doesn’t mean that Farrington’s bill is guaranteed to become law, but if the Live Free or Die State’s Second Amendment activists get behind the legislation I think there’s an excellent chance that students, faculty, and staff at most of the state’s public and private universities will soon be able to exercise their right to bear arms in self-defense in a setting that’s becoming increasingly attractive to murderous monsters.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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