Thursday, March 15, 2007

SB44: Inexpedient to Legislate!

That was the recommendation passed by the New Hampshire Senate Judiciary committee following the hearing this morning on Senate Bill 44: An act relative to licenses to carry pistols and revolvers (background and commentary here).

Inexpedient to legislate.

Dead on arrival.

Thank you for playing.

Score one for the good guys!

Approximately 600 people showed up for the hearing, which was held in a room with the capacity to hold 75 people. They did leave the doors open, but it's doubtful anyone in the hallway could hear what was being said inside.

[UPDATE: the folks who were stuck in the hallway are telling me there were more like 300 of us there. I had heard 600 from a third party source]

The folks who showed up in opposition to this bill vastly outranked those supporting it, in both numbers and in quality of rational arguments put forth.

I did shoot some video of the bill's sponsor, State Senator Peter Burling, speaking before the committee on behalf of the bill, along with the (less than impressive) testimony of two police chiefs who had signed on in support of SB44.

If the audio came out OK, I'll have these clips up on YouTube sometime this evening, with additional commentary, of course.

The best exchange between the speakers and the committee was when one gentleman was addressing the committee, and asked (and I'm paraphrasing), "Do you know what percentage the people who have come before you here today are carrying a handgun right now?"

To which, Senator Clegg from Hudson replied "Do you know what percentage of people sitting at this table up front are carrying a handgun right now?"

God bless the State of New Hampshire.

UPDATE: The videos I shot are over 100 MB in size, so unless I can figure out a way to compress the file size, I won't be able to post them on You Tube. Any help?