Senate Bill 492 – A bill titled ‘An act prohibiting bump stocks in New Hampshire’ has been introduced by 13 Senators & Representatives and survived the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning that it has a chance of advancing. The Committee will likely form a subcommittee/study session to deliberate on the bill.
The trouble begins with the title:
This bill does not just prohibit bump stocks, although that alone would make the bill unconstitutional and in no way reduce gun violence. The authoritarian authors of the bill are using the Las Vegas massacre to manipulate NH voters’ emotions in order to pass sweeping gun control legislation. Capitalizing on the alleged killer’s possible use of bump stocks to increase the potential deaths in the attack, these politicians titled the bill accordingly, but the language of the bill appears to be much more vague: A “…manual or power-driven trigger activating device constructed and designed so that when attached to a semiautomatic firearm it increases the rate of fire of that firearm.” would become illegal if this bill were to become law.
For those not very familiar with guns:
1) A semi-automatic gun is any gun that fires one cartridge per trigger pull and generally reloads the next cartridge from the magazine into the chamber without requiring another action. Most guns that are currently used are semi-automatic. Automatic guns, also known as machine guns, will fire continuously as long as the trigger is held to the rear. In addition to automatic firearms, the only other firearms in existence that ARE NOT semi-automatic are bolt-action rifles, traditional shotguns, and antique guns that are loaded one bullet at a time via the barrel. Authoritarian politicians only use the term ‘semi-automatic’ to engender fear and loathing in those who are not familiar with firearms technology so as to confuse them into thinking that they are talking about machine guns.
2) A ‘trigger activating’ device seems to include any device installed into/initiated by the trigger. This could be interpreted to include all upgraded triggers. The issue is that a massive amount of gun owners (especially concealed carriers) in New Hampshire upgrade their triggers after buying/before carrying their pistols. This bill would make them all into criminals overnight and would seemingly empower law enforcement to confiscate those guns.
Why do so many people upgrade their triggers?
Most modern pistols and rifles are seemingly created with trigger pull weights of around 5-8 pounds. This is especially true of pistols created for the primary purpose of concealed carry. They are probably built this way A) With the thought process that the longer and heavier trigger makes them safer – which also makes gun companies less liable for potential injuries due to mishandling and B) Perhaps because it is simply cheaper and easier to mass produce pistols with mediocre triggers.
One trip to the range with a pistol will teach you that the most difficult part of shooting is remaining on target while pulling the trigger. The longer and heavier the trigger pull, the more your hand naturally pulls the gun. This is the natural result of a person flexing their finger. During the first one pound and one centimeter of trigger pull, the muzzle normally remains perfectly on target. As the shooter pulls the trigger further to the rear and pulls with more strength, the muzzle naturally moves off target. This is ultimately what causes the novice shooter to miss the entire target from 10 feet away. The two primary approaches to resolve this issue are training with the gun and upgrading the trigger to make it shorter and lighter. The bottom line is that people who carry a pistol for self protection will do what is necessary to assure that they will be as accurate as possible should they ever need to use their pistol to save their life.
How many gun owners consider upgrading their triggers? Well, judging by the popularity of YouTube videos on trigger upgrades and the number of trigger upgrade kits available, we can safely assume that it’s a ton of people.
What if the manufacturer upgrades a trigger?
Without going too far into the weeds, let’s address two Ruger pistols. In 2010, Ruger introduced the LC9. Being hammer-fired, it had a long and heavy trigger pull of around 8 pounds. Consumers loved that the pistol was the smallest, lightest, and thinnest in its class, but they hated the trigger. As a result of the disapproval of the trigger, Ruger introduced the Ruger LC9s in 2014. This upgraded pistol featured a super smooth, light, short trigger pull of around 4-5 pounds and only a few centimeters of travel. (Yes, it comes with a manual safety option) The striker-fired LC9s blew its predecessor out of the water so fiercely that Ruger no longer produces the original LC9. With the upgraded trigger came the potential for Americans to defend themselves extremely quickly and accurately. So, the left must ruin this success.
There are many videos and articles comparing the two pistols, and I made a video to illustrate this point.
Since these upgraded triggers technically do increase the potential ‘rate of fire’ of the pistol, they could easily be interpreted by law enforcement and judges to be prohibited firearms once this bill becomes law. Being that shorter and lighter triggers do allow the firearm to be fired more rapidly, the logical question is: Would this bill make the Ruger LC9s a prohibited firearm?
This Bill Is Unconstitutional
Like all laws that relate to weapons, SB492 violates the 2nd amendment to the US constitution’s “..shall not be infringed.” clause. The 2nd amendment was written by our founders for the sole purpose of guaranteeing that the citizenry maintained the same level of weaponry as the US government.
This Bill Would Do Nothing To Decrease Murder
Being a law, this would naturally only prohibit those who were to obey it. Laws are not magical spells that can abolish items that are constructed from pure evil like bump stocks are. Those who are determined to kill one person or many people have already overcome the two most powerful hurdles of murder: The ethical dilemma of murder and the legal repercussions of murder. Do these politicians really believe that a person who already overcame those two hurdles would be stopped by a piece of paper stating that bump stocks are illegal? If murderers obeyed the law, they wouldn’t be murderers. This law would only restrict the rights of people who seek to defend themselves with their LC9s’s and other pistols and AR’s from burglary, aggression, and tyranny.
Those determined to kill many people would continue to use cars, bombs, and poisons to commit acts of terror. If they really wanted to use a gun, they would either find or create an automatic gun or they would use any other ordinary item to ‘bump fire a rifle’. It could be done using a variety of items, and people could bump fire their finger with enough training.
Please call and email the sponsors of the bill, the Judiciary committee, (they are currently deliberating on the bill) and your senator! Tell them to destroy this bill immediately!
*****Update*****
It seems that the Judiciary Committee has sent the bill to interim study, which means that it has poor chances of becoming law. While this is great news, keep in mind that the Committee unanimously voted to explore the bill instead of killing it immediately. Keep that in mind in November.
SPONSORS: Sen. Woodburn, Dist 1; Sen. Cavanaugh, Dist 16; Sen. D’Allesandro, Dist 20; Sen. Feltes, Dist 15; Sen. Fuller Clark, Dist 21; Sen. Hennessey, Dist 5; Sen. Lasky, Dist 13; Sen. Soucy, Dist 18; Sen. Watters, Dist 4; Rep. Shurtleff, Merr. 11; Rep. Berch, Ches. 1; Rep. Chandley, Hills. 22; Rep. Cushing, Rock. 21
