Posted on 08/06/2007 5:45:15 PM PDT by Dada Orwell
Below is a video of my August 5 open carry incident in New Hampshire. It starts audio-only then the video picks up a minute or two later when our pro photographer runs to the scene.
Basically I'm a liberty activist here; I wear a holstered pistol in public roughly once a week. It's legal in New Hampshire but not that common south of the notches. Cops sometimes ignore, sometimes harass you for doing it. When that happens to me, I don't get angry but use the chance to educate police about the open carry rights of NH citizens.
I was walking 50 yards from my car to the monthly Free Stater meeting at Murphy's Taproom in downtown Manchester. I usually open carry to that meeting.
I was noticed by a state trooper, but I noticed him too and called the Free Staters' emergency hotline before he got to me. In the video you hear my call realtime, as I report my situation and try to explain to our listeners what's happening.
Folks inside the bar also came running out to support me. Police thought it was pre-planned it happened so fast, like they'd been set up or something. But this is just how our guys react when they're nearby. I appreciate the fact that the police were able to maintain calm and respectful demeanor despite some of the anger directed against them by the crowd. But of course look I forward to the day when they don't make such stops in the first place.
Note that I am able to lawfully refuse them when they ask for my "papers" and personal information. If you think this is a better outcome than you'd get where you are now.....move your ass up here and share our freedoms!
Visit www.FreeStateProject.org
Thanks to all who showed support during and after this incident.
Hopefully this video will remind people New Hampshire does allow open carry, that officers here do handle themselves better than in most states, and that the Free Staters are continuing to improve level of support which is available to freedom lovers when police take exception to their responsible exercise of rights.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWXnK5UyRI&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fnewhampshireunderground%2Ecom%2Fforum%2Findex%2Ephp%3Ftopic%3D10019%2E45
Was Mr SS a friend of yours?
I can tell you from personal knowledge that this is the first time this sort of thing has happened outside the meeting. I would have been there myself, carrying openly, with my wife and son, if it hadn't been for the electrical wiring I had to get done on Saturday.
Here in GA open carry is legal if you have a CC permit, but taking a gun concealed or open into a taproom where alcohol is served would get you arrested and your CCW invalidated. Carrying openly would probably get you arrested anyway in the Atlanta metro area, and it would probably require hiring a lawyer to get you off the hook.
We badly need a overhaul of our CCW law here, but so far we haven't been able to make much headway of that front even though we now have a Republican majority State Assembly and governor that was supposed to be on our side of the issue.
I strongly doubt that this is true -- but if it is, it is one of the most abominably evil laws I've ever heard.
I’ve known him for a number of years - I’d say we’re more acquaintances, we don’t see each other much as he lives in Keene. He and I are in polar disagreement on certain core principles, like the use of defensive deadly force, so we each think the other’s a bit off our nut. He’s a really kind and friendly fellow most of the time - apparently except when faced with cops abusing their authority.
I don’t understand why some folks here would like to see a cop even further abuse that authority by attacking him and doing him grave bodily harm just because he’s not groveling at the sight of their shiny badges.
Friends of ours are planning to move to New Hampshire from Atlanta for just that reason, among others.
In New Hampshire, it's never been illegal to carry in a bar, and our decades of experience on that point puts the lie to the notion that seems to prevail everywhere else in the country that such violation of rights is "common sense."
We tried to fix it last session with a law that would clarify that a police officer in the performance of his duties has no expectation of privacy anywhere or at any time, except in the head or some such. The Democrats killed it, though.
By him, do you mean the guy in the striped shirt? Based on what I saw in that video, it's difficult to have any sympathy for him because it seemed as though he was doing everything he possibly could to escalate the situation into something that it wasn't.
It was the cops who started the situation, and the cops who could have ended the situation at any time by tipping their hats and going about their business, seeing as how no crime had been, was being, or was about to be committed, except by them under 18 USC 242.
In a democracy, people lose their liberties when they irritate people or scare them. Open carry does both.
Actually, that's exactly what the cops did---Striped Shirt Guy was the one who desperately wanted to escalate this minor thing into a "situation." The cops handled this situation well. Generally, I don't often side with the cops, but I have to give them credit here. Once they understood what was going down, they backed off accordingly. Manchester's not exactly the safest place in the world, so I can understand why they might look twice at a person packing heat.
People are people all over. If you irritate or scare enough of them they will do whatever it takes to end their fears.
Besides that fact, the political climate in NH is changing with the liberals moving up from Boston. They're looking for a nice quiet, safe, happy place live in and retire to. Poking them with a stick by carrying in the open might be an entertaining thing to do. But like poking a rattle snake here in AZ, it does no positive good and will eventually get you bit.
Well that would explain why he got a bit testy...For that very reason, then, Russell's friends need to keep him out of those scenarios, or one day they will escalate. That anger he's carrying around will eventually get him or someone else in trouble.
OTOH you maintained your cool and handled the situation properly. Well done.
If I was a gambling man I would bet money that the guy in the photo is a former MA resident who moved to NH and brought his left wing MA mindset with him.
I have a good friend and former neighbor from NH. He's a tough old WWII combat vet who would probably chase that guy in the hat all the way back to Boston if he still lived up there.
Read these NH statutes.
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/LVIII/570-A/570-A-1.htm
http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/RSA/html/LVIII/570-A/570-A-2.htm
Where I saw Mr. SS become dangerous to the situation was when he jumped in front of the MPD Off. A little more than groveling. He does not help your message.
Have you ever heard of ATTY Penny Dean?
Yep, Mr. SS is ready for a repeat tour in the slammer
Obviously, no justifiable expectation that the communication would go unrecorded could exist when someone is openly employing a camcorder, so the statute forbidding the interception of oral communication is inapplicable to this situation.
But pretending that there are no rattlesnakes gets you bit too, as was the case in Ohio where the right to armed self-defense in the Constitution languished unused for decades. And when you finally do wind up stepping too close to the rattlesnake, without even a stick in your hand, and then complain about getting bit, people line up behind the rattlesnakes and say they should have snapped your elbow too, for good measure.
Only a mentally-ill person would be put into a state of mortal dread seeing someone walking down the street, minding his or her own business, with a holstered sidearm. And the accepted way to deal with the illness of phobia or anxiety disorders in the psychological community is through acclimation.
It's not about "entertainment," it's about a vital struggle for the preservation of the fundamental human right to armed self-defense, which as you know is under siege from every direction around the nation, including from police officers who swear an oath to uphold the Constitution.
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