Armed Self-Defense is a Foundation of Our Freedoms

(Editor's note: This post was co-written by N.H. House Speaker William O'Brien.)

By the late fall of 1776, the Continental Army under George Washington was on the ropes.  The year before the army had stood tall at Bunker Hill and in spring, it had forced the British regulars out of Boston, but six months later, it waited on the banks of the Delaware River in Pennsylvania for the British in New Jersey to cross and deliver their deathblow. The sunshine patriots were gone and the Continentals Army hardly existed as a functioning fighting force.

That summer and fall the Continentals had barely escaped annihilation at the Battle of Brooklyn, had been thrown off the island of Manhattan in another defeat, and were chased the length of New Jersey to their hoped for sanctuary in Pennsylvania. Having defeated, if not broken, the organized resistance of the colonists, the British turned to terrorizing the local population into submission, a favored tactic that had worked well in the past for the English as demonstrated in their historical suppressions of Irish and Scottish nationalists, as recently as the Jacobite Rebellion in Scotland only 30 years earlier.

However, America even then was different. The British and their Hessian mercenaries did not encounter an unarmed European peasantry browbeaten by centuries of feudalism and oppression. Rather, they rolled out their policy of rape and pillaging on armed American farmers with a tradition of self-defense in a sometimes hostile land.

Within weeks, the armed and outraged resistance of those New Jersey farmers relegated the British army to controlling only garrison towns along the road from New York to Trenton. The British found that they could leave those forts only in groups of at least 500 soldiers and even then lost hundreds of soldiers in what has since become known as the Forage War.

Accounts come down to us of Red Coat foraging parties of over a hundred men returning with less than 30 remaining. Their fighting strength was cut in half by the end of the winter. Armed citizens engaged in self-defense saved the Revolution and American freedom.

Now Gov. John Lynch may have come to his political career after great success as an industrialist and, undoubtedly, he has perfected the first lesson of being a successful politician in today’s world, just keep smiling for the camera. However, his recent veto of Senate Bill 88 and the right of New Hampshire citizens to self-defense however shows that he surely is no student of history.

Our founding fathers whose Revolution and therefore lives were saved by an armed, outraged citizenry, never wanted a country with citizens who could not turn to the very armed self-defense that had saved them. Having sat in Philadelphia in 1776 waiting to see if the British would cross into Pennsylvania, the leaders of our Revolution knew from their own experiences that just as a nation’s army may not provide a perfect defense, so it is not possible for its constabulary to provide immediate defense against all wrongful acts. They knew in fact, and not just in theory, that freedom is founded on the right and ability of each of us to defend ourselves. So 15 years later they wrote a fundamental right to bear arms into the Federal Bill of Rights and confirmed that right in their states constitutions.

Since the days of our founding fathers, too many, and now even our current governor, have confused the safety existing because of this tradition of armed self-defense as a reason to abandon its very foundation.  They see an armed public ready and willing to defend itself as a wrong that stands in the way of their application of large government solutions to public safety issues.  They have lost an understanding that armed self-defense is the bedrock upon which our freedoms arose and are guaranteed in the future.  The latest assault in this effort is Gov. Lynchs veto of Senate Bill 88.

SB 88 was passed by both chambers of New Hampshire’s legislature to confirm the existence of a right of armed self-defense against those who would threaten our personal safety.  It would deter crime by letting violent criminals know they enjoy no safety when committing their crimes merely due to the absence of a law enforcement officer. It would confirm the reality of self-defense as a foundation of freedom.

Those who founded our country knew that they would forfeit their lives if the Revolution failed.  They also knew that they owed their lives to an armed populace, like the outraged farmers of New Jersey in 1776, who not only were inclined but also held the means to defend themselves.  It is time for John Lynch to come to this realization or for the citizens of New Hampshire to find a governor who will not ignore their history or their safety.

William O’Brien, of Mont Vernon, is the Speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives. D.J. Bettencourt, of Salem, is the Majority Leader of the New Hampshire House of Representatives.