You betcha!
Posted on 10/31/2005 9:43:58 AM PST by neverdem
Police took Michael V. Pelletier’s loaded pistol while he browsed in a bookstore; David K. Ridley’s mistake was to change jackets in a mall parking lot, and Penny S. Dean’s encounter happened during a late-night constitutional on a city street.
Because the New Hampshire Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms — no license needed, unless the weapon is concealed — all three got their guns back within minutes, but the confrontations caused them unease.
“The bottom line is that this type of thing shouldn’t be happening in a state where (carrying a pistol) is perfectly allowed,” said Dean, a lawyer and consulting counsel to Gun Owners of New Hampshire, the gun-rights advocacy organization.
Dean, in a routine followed often in the 10 years she has lived on Warren Street in Concord, was taking a late-night walk on June 16. She was on Pleasant Street out by St. Paul School when state trooper Abbott Presby stopped his cruiser.
“He must have asked me six times for a driver’s license. Then he proceeded to ask what I was doing there and I kept asking him, ‘Are you detaining me?’” Dean said.
She didn’t have her driver’s license. She had a cellular phone, a credit card, her license to carry a concealed pistol and her Glock 23 in a nylon, neon-pink fanny pack.
Dean wrote a letter to state police Col. Frederick H. Booth citing her constitutional rights and complaining of her “detention” by Presby.
“Had I not vigorously, repeatedly and firmly asserted that I wanted to (be) released from this detention I could have been illegally held there indefinitely. I firmly believe that it was only after I explained to trooper Presby that I was an attorney that the impetus to release me awakened,” Dean wrote.
Three months later, state police Lt. Mark J. Myrdek responded, writing that a review of the incident had found Presby’s “actions and conduct were justified, lawful and proper.”
On March 27, 2004, at about 9:15 p.m., three police officers in uniform and two detectives in plain clothes converged on Michael Pelletier as he thumbed through a book at Barnes & Noble store in Manchester. Pelletier and his wife had marked their 11th anniversary with dinner, then gone to the bookstore, where his coat stayed in the car. He had forgotten the change in attire left visible the holstered Glock 30 pistol tucked into his belt at his back.
A shopper telephoned police.
Pelletier said the officers “basically grabbed me by the shoulder, disarmed me and took me out of the store. They ran my license and registration and the serial number on the gun and stood around lecturing me for 20 minutes. It was irritating, but at least I wasn’t arrested.
“What boggled my mind was that out of at least seven officers and dispatchers involved not one seemed to know that open carry is legal in New Hampshire and they basically treated this like they would a felony stop. . . . I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I was minding my own business and I think they could muster the ability to treat me with courtesy and respect in that situation,” said Pelletier, who lives in Merrimack and is a West Coast transplant drawn here by the Free State Project’s pick of New Hampshire in 2003 as the place to promote its minimal-government agenda.
Alan M. Rice of Brookline, the treasurer of the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, has been dealing with gun use safety for 10 years. He is certified as an “instructor-trainer,” qualified to teach even the firearms instructors.
Commenting on what Pelletier has written on the Internet about his bookstore experience, Rice said, “I think he exercised extraordinarily poor judgment on that particular night (because) he had an open-top holster in the small of his back in an unconcealed fashion. . . .
“Most professionals do not carry a gun there because it’s hard to access the weapon and hard to retain the weapon if someone wants to take it away from you.”
Rice prefers holsters with retention features that thwart efforts to extract the handgun, and he advises students to place the belt holster at their right or left side, where it is protected by the arm.
As a firearms instructor, Rice views concealed-carry as “a good way to deter crime because they don’t know who is carrying.”
Though it is legal to carry a gun in plain view, “open-carry is not a bright idea,” Rice said. “You are a target. If someone comes in with criminal intent, the first thing he is going to do is neutralize any person with a weapon who can hurt him.”
Like Pelletier, David Ridley’s move to New Hampshire was inspired by the Free State Project. He came from Texas, which he described as having restrictive gun licensing laws.
“When you come to a place where the right is recognized by government and you’ve never had it before, it’s a right you want to celebrate. At the same time, if you don’t exercise the right, I think you will eventually lose it. So for me, open-carry is primarily a political thing,” said Ridley, who lives in Keene.
Ridley had changed jackets and was engrossed in lettering a placard on the hood of his car in a supermarket parking lot in Salem on March 21 when five police officers, responding to a citizen’s call, asked about the holstered Glock 19 on his hip.
“They said, ‘You alarmed a person who saw the gun.’
“When that is the situation, they have to respond to the call. I understand that, but what was wrong was when they started talking about arresting me when I hadn’t done anything illegal,” Ridley said.
In responding to a letter from Ridley, Salem Police Chief Paul T. Donovan wrote that his officers would continue to respond “with an open mind” when a complaint comes in about someone carrying a firearm.
“In this day and age where people have committed some very violent attacks using firearms, it is understandable that people who do not understand the values of law-abiding firearms owners run scared. We need to work at improving our image with those who don’t understand,” Donovan wrote.
Thank you.
Why? Because I agree with the quoted firearms instructor and New Hampshire Firearms Coalition officer that "Though it is legal to carry a gun in plain view, “open-carry is not a bright idea.”"?
You seem to be confusing an assertion that something is stupid, with an assertion that it ought to be illegal. Back to reading comprehension class for you.
Ouch! Check your attitude(s).
Free Staters are only scary to people who are against a real restoration of Federalism.The FSP and LP are also scary to people (in NH and elsewhere) who feel their plank on the elimination of free tax-funded public education will throw this country into a new dark age.
"Thanks Top...
They didn't use that expression when I was in."
That's what I get for spending time around Navy types. "Elephant cages" and such!
Take care,
Top sends
Yep! A short form, a phone call, and a 'have fun shooting'!
Oh, and the painfull part of handing over the money! Im thinkin about buying a new gun within the next few weeks. Been looking into a bushmaster.
You betcha!
Indeed. Why, anyone who wants to steal a gun for their own use need only ambush an armed/uniformed cop and take his.
But there does not seem to be much of an epidemic of such incidents- yet. Perhaps only some citizens are fully equal to others....
The Founding Fathers understood this but I am convinced they were the last ones.
I challenge anyone to find a large organization, of any type, government, private, church etc. that does not abuse their power simply because they became powerful.
Paging Lord Acton!
You are invited to join the FR Free Staters' ping list, AKA the *Porcupine List,* for future FR posts and additional info on FSP and FWP news and activity reports.
Alternately, you can use the FR keyword search for *PORCUPINES* *FSP* or *FREESTATEPROJECT*.
Another correspondant pointed out that the police response would have been the same, or worse, if I had printed, or had been purposefully carrying openly in a Bianci thumb-break hip holster, so Alan Rice's "extremely poor judgement" comment on the style of holster I was using that evening misses the point entirely.
Concur. Rice's comments about holster selection echo others I've heard from self-importantinstructors about the *only* sort of equipment that ought to be used by handgun carriers, whether open or concealed, that all too often for some reason happens to coincide with the style/make of holster sold in said instructor's gun shop or by an associated pal.
Agency restrictions often follow similar influences, though the current military and contractor restrictions in Iraq prohibiting horizontal-carry shoulder rigs resulted from actual injury-producing incidents. And horizontal-carry Small-of-Back *SOB* belt rigs offer the same sort of possibility.
[Though perhaps not the meaning intended....]
Especially since he had his nose buried in a book.
Especially since he had his nose buried in a book.
Y'know these incidents -- seem to me -- all based upon a series of unfortunate (& rare) circumstances which led up to each of the encounters with LEOs.
Why the LEOs -- of all people -- aren't up to speed regarding laws governing firearm possession in the very state they're working is quite frankly beyond me.
Be that as it may it'd appear that's precisely what's happening, eh?
I guess what I find the most bothersome in each incident was after IDs had been produced in compliance with LEO's demand(s) they seemed to not want to let it go, deliberately choosing to antagonize the (now known) law abiding citizen.
Apparently LEOs in NH no longer can differentiate between a genuine "criminal" and a law abiding citizen, anymore.
...& worrisome for a a whole host of reasons.
Absolutely, and I don't say that to insult anyone. We all have to take other peoples experience, good or bad, and learn from it.
Glad someone agrees.
Bottom line is: If you're carrying exposed, in an open top holster, in the small of your back, in a crowded store while you're distracted, you are inviting disaster!
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