Women's Defense League of NH Hosts 2nd Amendment Rally Sunday

CONCORD, NH - Gun rights advocates will be rallying at the Statehouse on May 15, 2016, calling on Gov. Maggie Hassan, D-Exeter, to approve HB 582, a bill that would remove what one org calls “arbitrary and capricious profiling discretion given local law enforcement” to approve conceal carry permits.

At issue is a nearly 100-year-old law that was first approved in New York in 1911 and New Hampshire about a decade later, in the wake of fears of Italian and Irish immigrants obtaining access to firearms and upending the social order of the time.

Members of the Women’s Defense League of New Hampshire researched the history of the law and found it was approved in New Hampshire in an effort to keep foreign-born and unnaturalized men and women from having access to personal protection and natural rights especially after bitter labor disputes in mills around the Granite State in the 1920s. Those mills and labor strife are long gone, but the legislation remains.

A similar bill – SB 116 – was approved by both the state Senate and House in 2015 as a “modest bill” allow anyone who has the right already to openly carry a weapon to do so on a concealed basis without securing a license, not unlike New Hampshire's neighboring state of Vermont, according to Majority Leader Jeb Bradley R-Wolfeboro.

Hassan, however, vetoed the bill last year, saying she supported the role of local law enforcement in overseeing pistol permitting while also quoting conservative jurists and lawmakers who previously stated that the process was sensible.

Organizers hope that Sunday’s rally – not unlike other rallies in Concord – would draw attention to the issue and repeal unacceptable “ethnic, racial and gender discrimination” that is a blight on the state’s history and no longer needed.

“New Hampshire citizens ‘demand’ they no longer be subject to the personal opinions of law enforcement,” the org said in a statement. “It’s time Governor Hassan listen to the people of New Hampshire, sign HB 582, and end her statutory discrimination. It is only Governor Hassan who is allowing the abuse to continue.”

Previously, the organization and other New Hampshire groups, have held 2nd Amendment rallies in February, as part of the national day of resistance. Last year, the group became the first organization ever to host a 2nd Amendment completely organized and run by women.

It is unknown whether or not anti-gun groups will hosts a counter-rally, have a presence on Sunday, or host its own event, as they have in the past, when the Mayors Against Illegal Guns and No More Names groups came to Concord nearly three years ago.