(Picture courtesy of New Hampshire Union Chief)
New Hampshire’s Home of Representatives voted 188-165 on Thursday to advance laws that will strip public faculties and universities of their authority to ban firearms on campus. Home Invoice 1793 now heads to the Finance Committee earlier than probably transferring to the Senate.
The invoice would prohibit publicly funded faculties from limiting lawful possession or use of weapons on campus — together with firearms, pepper spray, mace, stun weapons, and tasers. In different phrases, in case you can legally carry it in New Hampshire, you may carry it on a public faculty campus.
“Stay Free or Die” Lastly Applies to College students
State Rep. Samuel Farrington (R-Rochester), a UNH scholar who sponsored the invoice, made the easy argument: your constitutional rights don’t evaporate once you cross an invisible line onto campus property.
“School college students are adults, deserving of equal safety below the regulation because it already stands right here in New Hampshire,” Farrington mentioned.
He’s not improper. New Hampshire is a constitutional carry state — no allow required for open or hid carry. However in some way, unelected college directors have been allowed to create gun-free zones that override state regulation and go away law-abiding adults defenseless. HB 1793 would repair that inconsistency.
The Opposition’s Argument: Geography Trumps Rights
Rep. David Meuse (D-Portsmouth) pushed again with the declare that campus carry restrictions don’t goal college students particularly as a result of they apply to “everybody on campus, no matter age.”
“These restrictions apply to everybody on campus, no matter age,” Meuse mentioned. “Briefly, they’ve completely nothing to do with who you’re and every little thing to do with the place you’re.”
That’s… not the protection he thinks it’s. “We’re not discriminating in opposition to you personally, we’re simply declaring this whole geographic space a constitutional rights-free zone” isn’t precisely a compelling civil liberties argument.
The Ordinary Panic About “Weapons in Dorms”
At a public listening to final month, some college students testified that they’re sufficiently old to vote, serve within the navy, and tackle crushing scholar mortgage debt — so perhaps they need to be trusted with their Second Modification rights too. Radical idea, we all know.
Different college students clutched their pearls about weapons in “cramped areas like dorms and lecture rooms,” apparently unaware that accountable gun house owners handle to hold firearms in elevators, film theaters, eating places, and each different confined area in society with out the expected bloodbaths.
The Eight-Yr Flip
Right here’s the attention-grabbing half: Eight years in the past, weeks after the Parkland taking pictures, a bipartisan group of New Hampshire lawmakers rejected an analogous campus carry proposal. Now they’ve reversed course with a strong 23-vote margin.
What modified? Possibly legislators realized that gun-free zones don’t cease criminals — they only disarm victims. Or perhaps they seen that the dozen or so states with campus carry legal guidelines haven’t descended into Wild West chaos. Both method, New Hampshire seems prepared to hitch the rising listing of states that belief authorized adults to train their rights on faculty property.
What Occurs Subsequent
HB 1793 is referred to the Home Finance Committee to evaluate the fiscal impression (spoiler alert: permitting individuals to train current rights prices precisely $0). If it clears Finance, it heads to the Senate.
New Hampshire has a Republican-controlled legislature and a Republican governor, so the trail to passage appears promising. The query is whether or not the Senate has the identical widespread sense that the Home demonstrated Thursday.
School campuses aren’t magical drive fields the place the legal guidelines of physics — or the Structure — cease making use of. They’re public property the place adults work, research, and have the identical proper to self-defense as anyplace else within the state. New Hampshire is lastly acknowledging that actuality.
About time.
Sources:
NRA-ILA: “New Hampshire: Home Passes Campus Carry Invoice” (February 5, 2026) https://www.nraila.org/articles/20260205/new-hampshire-house-passes-campus-carry-bill
Harmony Monitor: “N.H. Home advances invoice permitting weapons on faculty campuses” (February 5, 2026) https://www.concordmonitor.com/2026/02/05/new-hampshire-campus-carry/
