Republicans in the New Hampshire House of Representatives are fuming after Democrats passed a bill to ban lawmakers from carrying concealed weapons into the chamber, and are arguing that items like pens and credit cards could be considered deadly as well.
For decades state law forbid guns from entering the state house, but when Republicans took control of the house in 2010, they were quick to lift the ban. On the first say of the new legislative session, the Democratic majority that swept back into power last November quickly passed a similar ban again.
Republicans attacked the new ban as an encroachment of their Second Amendment rights, but according to the Concord-Monitor also sought to derail the bill by warning of a slippery slope:
“A holstered gun is not a deadly weapon. . . . But anything can be used as a deadly weapon. A credit card can be used to cut somebody’s throat,” said Rep. Dan Dumaine, an Auburn Republican.
New Hampshire Republicans argued that access to guns on the house floor is really a safety measure in the event that a shooter were to ever enter the chambers, but a Mother Jones investigation of mass shootings found that in “not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun.”