NH: Vid of my latest open carry incident

NHfree.com ^

[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

[epow]

While I have often disputed and argued with Russell and others about the character and nature of the liberation of Iraq and the important role that the US military in bringing it about, and the long-term benefit it will bring to the world, I have never felt that their position is utterly devoid of merit.

I didn't know that the guy holding the sign in that photo is one of the good guys in this story, I just assumed that he's some unidentified war protester who's on the other side of the gun carry issue as well as against the war in Iraq.

My bad, I'll try to pay attention to who's who on the thread from here on before posting again. I'm reading and posting to the thread during breaks from the menial jobs my wife assigned to me on this housecleaning day.

[mvpel]

I don’t think that photo of him is from last Saturday.

[dragnet2]

It is very clear WATCHING the video that the cops DON'T know what the law is in this regard.

If they don't know the firearms laws in regards to carrying/transporting them, in their own state, well, they should not be involved in law enforcement.

Or they don't think citizens do so they try to get away with more.

I think you are closer with this point.

For the record I want to say, I personally feel all firearms laws should be eliminated, EXCEPT those directed at felons and the mentally ill. Many states have made an absolute mockery of the 2nd Amendment. In addition, I feel states and counties that deny law abiding citizens CCW permits should be held TOTALLY liable if those citizens become victims of crime.

[Titan Magroyne]

Amazing. Great job remaining composed and respectfully refusing upon hearing “your papers please.”

And I do commend the officers involved for not escalating the situation as an example to those who would dare to assert their 2nd & 4th Amendment rights.

[Just another Joe]

Placemarker to watch later.

[mvpel]

For the record I want to say, I personally feel all firearms laws should be eliminated, EXCEPT those directed at felons and the mentally ill.

If you add the word "violent" before "felons" I can get on board with that...

Ordinarily, passing a bad check in Ohio is a misdemeanor, but large checks or multiple checks within a six-month period aggregating to large amounts make it a 5th-, 4th-, or 3rd-class felony, depending on the amounts involved.[7]

And if a felon is violent enough that they can't be trusted with a gun, then the question becomes why they're not in prison.

[epow]

For the record I want to say, I personally feel all firearms laws should be eliminated, EXCEPT those directed at felons and the mentally ill.

I'll go farther than that. I don't believe that ANY laws against ANY class of people owning and carrying guns do any good at stopping crimes that involve guns. If a person who is not deterred by laws against murder, robbery, rape, etc, etc, which impose heavy penalties on the perpetrator, they certainly won't be deterred by a law against carrying a gun. Anyway, few criminals go to jail just for illegally carrying a gun, that's usually one of the first charges that gets bargained away by the prosecution in exchange for a confession, a plea bargain agreement, squealing on accomplices, info about the whereabouts of loot or bodies, etc.

IMHO allowing people to be legally armed at all times and places would do much more to cut crime rates than any gun law ever will. Combined with more severe penalties, including the death penalty for murder and for forcible rape of a minor, that would not be subject to parole or probation, I believe the violent crime rate would decline to somewhere near the rate for the late 19th century before many cities and states enacted draconian gun laws. Contrary to the film and TV industry's highly exaggerated portrayal of the "old west" era, it was for the most part a much safer and less violent era than today by far.

[epow]

In re #147.

Before someone points out that some of the “old west” cow towns banned the carrying of guns in the city limits, I want to say that it was a much different situation in those towns than anywhere in the US today.

In towns where a gunslinging town marshall or sheriff, who btw was often a much worse criminal than the young cattle drovers he was hired to control, he often enforced that ban by either shooting down the offender if he put up a fight or brutally pistol whipping him into submission and then locking him up in a foul jail cell for the duration of his party’s stay in town.

If today's LEOs enforced gun laws that way there would probably be less crime now as well, but I doubt that any of us want to see that drastic solution to the problem.

[mvpel]

Not all cops are pro-gun. There’s certainly cops out there who think that only cops should be allowed to own or carry firearms, and in fact a NH State Trooper, as I recall, was quoted as saying “Your right to self-defense ends with calling 911.”

If that doesn’t curl your hair, nothing will.

[FreedomPoster]

The guy in the striped shirt was a full-on idiot, no doubt. That guy needs some Valium.

I don’t have a problem with Dada Orwell’s approach. If we don’t exercise rights, they atrophy. There’s more to our rights, than just the open carry aspects of the 2nd at work here. There’s also the right to go about without police demanding “your papers, PLEASE!” whenever they feel like it, which is pretty much what was going on there.

[mvpel]

The police are on our side, unless we’re out to commit a crime.

I just remembered, too, reading an article in some Massachusetts newspaper somewhere about a police chief in Boston - he was whining to the reporter about women "arming themselves to the teeth."

What were these women doing? They were applying to him for his lordly permission to carry seasoning - aka pepper spray - because there was a serial home-invasion rapist on the loose.

I felt then, and I still feel, that that police chief will burn in a far lower circle of hell than the rapist. He's sitting there with his department-issue Sig on his hip, complaining about women wanting permission from him to mount a feeble little means of defense against a brutal, violent criminal.

It made me f-ing sick. The rapist is a rapist, but that police chief is a rape enabler.

[mvpel]

Are you referring to Russell’s righteous and loudly-proclaimed indignation at the unlawful detention of his friend?

Surely you don’t think peaceable open carry is to the Second Amendment to screaming profanities in public is to the First, right?

[FreedomPoster]

I don’t agree with your analogy at all. Carrying holstered like that isn’t anything like screaming profanities. The analogy to screaming profanities, might be waving a gun in your hand around in the air.

[mamelukesabre]

The self proclaimed “expert” riders claim you don’t need to use the clutch to shift a modern motorcycle if you know what you are doing. Although I am one of those self proclaimed experts, you might say, I do not buy into this. I prefer to shift with the clutch. I don’t need any undue wear on shifter dogs.

The hamburger sack was balanced on my gas tank between my knees and partly pinched between one thigh and the gas tank. Whenever I needed to use the clutch I simply set the hamburger down on the sack and did so. Then pick it up again and take another bite. It’s far more easy than you would think. The trick is to only order “plain” hamburgers so there’s no risk of messes. No french fries obviously. and no drinks.

I used to keep a small water bottle wedged between my right handlebar and brake line and throttle cables and the additional assistance of a toy sized leather dog collar around it. On long rides I would set the throttle lock and take a sip when I needed to. Unfortunately the bike I have now doesn’t hold the bottle so tightly that way as my old bike did so I gave up that practice.

I do occasionally talk on a cell phone while riding, sometimes if traffic permits. But only if wearing something with a breast pocket. A flip type cell phone can be “set down” for an instant in your breast pocket, still in the unfolded position while you momentarily use the clutch, then picked up again easily because it is tall when not folded up and sticks out the top of your pocket. It only takes about 3/4 of a second if you are quick. Obviously you can’t do this if wearing a helmet or going along at highway speeds. The wind makes it too hard to hear.

And yes, I have dropped my phone a time or two and had to circle back around and pick it up. My technique for that is to ride slowly past and kick the phone to the side of the road, then circle back around again and pull over with flashers on to retrieve it. I suppose if I was a little nuts I might try to pick it up as I rode past without stopping, but I’m not quite that limber or nearly that insane.

btw, as far as I know, harleys are the only bikes you can put on both turnsignals at once...ie emergency flashers.

[Copernicus]

I have done both before my LE days. I prefer a non multilevel retention holster.

I am certainly no fan of the crossdraw or the small-of-the-back holster as our New Hampshire posters seem to be.

But the distinction between concealed carry and open carry is essentially another political fiction We The People should not tolerate from our Government.

Anyone who "open carries" can cross the line to "concealed" either accidentally or deliberately with the addition of almost any type of foul weather gear-raincoat, ski parka, sweater.

Most people, given a choice, would prefer to carry concealed for the exact reason you name.

It was in the aftermath of the Civil War when fear spread across the land newly emancipated citizens might choose to exercise their newly granted sovereignty that laws defining a distinction between concealed carry and open carry became popular.

Over a century later, innocent Citizens in the 21st Century still pay for that little political clusterfoxtrot.

The basic principle at stake here is "innocent until proven guilty". Mere possession of a weapon does not in any way demonstrate malignant intent.

Prior restraint in the form of licensing, background checks, and possession laws are, and should be, UnConstitutional.

A few years ago pictures of young adults who were members of the Israeli Defense Force appeared all over the Internet. They were dressed in civilian clothes, were frequently in groups of two or three, and had their fully automatic platform rifles slung casually over a shoulder. The photographs included group shots in ice cream parlors, public pavilions and buses. It is quite a common sight in Israel and arouses no suspicion from the general public or tourists.

That is yesteryears America and I look forward to the day we return to that public attitude.

Best regards,