HB160. Castle Doctrine Hearing Jan, 29th 1:30pm room LOB 204

[Porcupine Kate]

HB160 –Extending the "Castle Doctrine" to the use of physical force in defense of a person to wherever he or she has a legal right to be.

Will be heard by the CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND PUBLIC SAFETY

Thursday January 29th at 1:30 PM in Room LOB 204

The following Representatives and Senators who are sponsoring this very important piece of legislation need your help: Rep.  Leo Pepino, Rep.  Robert Mead, Rep.  Barbara Shaw, Rep.  Alfred Baldasaro, Rep.  Pamela Price, Sen.  John Gallus, Sen.  Sheila Roberge, Sen.  Robert Letourneau

Please pass this information on to all supporters, as we need to garner as much support as possible when the committee hears this legislation. The key is the amount of pressure that you can exert by your physical presence and your testimony at the scheduled committee hearing.

In addition we must mobilize the 2nd Amendment supporters from around the state to call, e-mail and write letters to the members of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety committee listed below urging them to pass HB160.

Thank you in advance for your help and support in the fight to protect our rights.

Sincerely yours,

Bob Mead

House of Representatives

Hillsborough District 4


Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee members:

Stephen Shurtleff  11 Vinton Drive,  Penacook, NH  03303-1583
     Phone: (603)753-4563
     Email: steveshurtleff@ aol.com

Laura Pantelakos

528 Dennett Street, Portsmouth, NH  03801-3621
     Phone: (603)436-2148
     Email: lcpantelakos@ verizon.net

Stanley Stevens PO Box 613,  Wolfeboro, NH  03894-0613
     Phone: (603)569-2410
     Email: fourstar3@verizon. net

Roger Berube 15 Stackpole Road, Somersworth, NH  03878-1627
     Phone: (603)692-5653

Delmar Burridge 7 Starlight Drive, Keene, NH  03431-2800
     Phone: (603)352-5363
     Email: dburridge@ne. rr.com

Shannon Chandley 3 High Meadow Ln, Amherst, NH  03031-2554
     Phone: (603)672-6540
     Email: shannon.chandley@ leg.state. nh.us

David Welch PO Box 570, Kingston, NH  03848-0570
     Phone: (603)642-4402
     Email: repdawelch@hotmail. com

Everett Weare 30 Forest Court, Seabrook, NH  03874-4020
     Phone: (603)474-9454
     Email: aweare@aol.com

Elaine Swinford 43 Webster Lane, Center Barnstead, NH  03225-3332
     Phone: (603)776-0274
     Email: elainesw@metrocast. net

Timothy Robertson 185 Daniels Hill Rd, Keene, NH  03431-5704
     Phone: (603)352-7006
     Email: timr@webryders. net

Robert Cushing 395 Winnacunnet Rd, Hampton, NH  03842-2732
     Phone: (603)926-2737
     Email: renny.cushing@ leg.state. nh.us

Barbara McCarthy PO Box 154,  East Derry, NH  03041-0154
     Phone: (603)432-5548
     Email: jfmbam@msn.com

Gene Charron 297 North Pond Road, Chester, NH  03036-4043
     Phone: (603)887-2172
     Email: genecharron@ comcast.net

Moe Villeneuve 146 County Road, Bedford, NH  03110-6207
     Phone: (603)472-6928
     Email: moeville@peoplepc. com

Robert Willette 218 Ball Hill Rd,  Milford, NH  03055-3408
     Phone: N/A
     Email: bob.willette@ leg.state. nh.us

Lori Movsesian 15 Berkeley Street, Nashua, NH  03064-2310
     Phone: (603)889-1669
     Email: movsesian28@ yahoo.com

Beth Rodd PO Box 337, Bradford, NH  03221-0337
     Phone: (603)938-2692
     Email: bethrodd@tds. net

Mark Ryder  138 Sixth St, Dover, NH  03820-2625
     Phone: (603)842-4319
     Email: mrryderlaw@comcast. net

Robert Fesh  27 Claire Avenue, Derry, NH  03038-4220
     Phone: (603)434-1550
     Email: rmfesh@comcast. net

Larry Gagne 126 Lakeside Dr,  Manchester, NH  03104-5801
     Phone: (603)625-9692
     Email: N/A

[Porcupine Kate]

Please spread this around to everyone you can think of.

[rowland]

A right means nothing if not enforced.

A citizens right to be somewhere means nothing if not enforced.

If the police will not and/or cannot enforce this right then someone else must enforce it or else it is not enforced and therefore denied.

Re: Armed Response by David Kenik, chapter 1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County

Although there exist conditions in which the state (or a subsidiary agency, like a county department of social services) is obligated to provide protection against private actors, and failure to do so is a violation of 14th Amendment rights, the court reasoned "The affirmative duty to protect arises not from the State's knowledge of the individual's predicament or from its expressions of intent to help him, but from the limitation which it has imposed on his freedom to act on his own behalf... it is the State's affirmative act of restraining the individual's freedom to act on his own behalf - through incarceration, institutionalization, or other similar restraint of personal liberty - which is the "deprivation of liberty" triggering the protections of the Due Process Clause, not its failure to act to protect his liberty interests against harms inflicted by other means.

Now does this mean that by denying us the right to protect ourselves the state has burdened itself with this responsibility? How then will it fulfill this obligation? What if it can't?

"If the job of the police were to protect you as an individual, they would have protect all other citizens as well. In that circumstance, everyone would need a personal police officer 24 hours a day. Three quarters of the populace would be required to be employed as police officers to protect the remaining citizens, each hour of the day and night."

"My 1911 is better than your 911"

Cite crime figures for Manchester.

Get some anecdotes.

Raise concern about the collapse of civil order when the federal government proves unable to 'rescue' the economy?

The government is not competent to protect our right to go about freely. This right is essential to liberty, therefore we MUST enforce it ourselves.

If the government while being unable or unwilling to secure a right for us also denies us the legal right to secure this right for ourselves, then it is effectively DENYING us the right we seek to secure.

This is in effect tyranny.

[keithandstuff]

Is this the gun bill that Gov. Lynch was against last time it came up?

[Giggan]

Yes, it passed house and senate, and I believe it was a few votes in the senate from overriding the veto.

[BikerBill]

Now does this mean that by denying us the right to protect ourselves the state has burdened itself with this responsibility?

[Art.] 3. [Society, its Organization and Purposes.] When men enter into a state of society, they surrender up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to ensure the protection of others; and, without such an equivalent, the surrender is void.

Particularly if the state can't protect me (it can't -- I could experience a home invasion before I finish typing this), then any surrender of my right to self-protection is void. Even if 2A and 2-a didn't essentially take RKBA off the table as trade-able.

[rowland]

Yes, it passed house and senate, and I believe it was a few votes in the senate from overriding the veto.

http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-9535025.html

Invoking images of shoot-outs over drug deals gone bad or snatched purses in crowded shopping malls, Gov. John Lynch vetoed a bill yesterday that would have expanded the rights to use deadly force in self-defense.

Lynch stood in the Executive Council chambers yesterday morning with more than 40 prosecutors and law enforcement officials - most in full uniform - to make the announcement. It is the third veto of his political career.

"We do not want to put in place a law that would encourage felons to inject further violence in our communities," Lynch said. "Under this proposed legislation, one drug dealer, or other hardened criminal, could kill another and then claim self-defense in court."

And this would be bad how?

[dreepa]

Got a mailer from NHFC about this.
www.nhfc-ontarget.org

[rowland]

Now does this mean that by denying us the right to protect ourselves the state has burdened itself with this responsibility?

[Art.] 3. [Society, its Organization and Purposes.] When men enter into a state of society, they surrender up some of their natural rights to that society, in order to ensure the protection of others; and, without such an equivalent, the surrender is void.

Particularly if the state can't protect me (it can't -- I could experience a home invasion before I finish typing this), then any surrender of my right to self-protection is void. Even if 2A and 2-a didn't essentially take RKBA off the table as trade-able.

If people are dying from gun violence in this state outside of their homes while the state did not permit them to defend themselves then the state has failed in an obligation to defend them. Each of these deaths is a denial of the right to life.

That would open up the state to thousands of negligent homicide charges!

[Denis Goddard]

Got a mailer from NHFC about this.
www.nhfc-ontarget.org

I got one too. That mailer had some good things to learn from, and some things that should have been better.

The Good:
* "Politicans tell you to run away from criminals" in big letters on the outside
* Scenarios to get you emotionally involved ("you are walking away from the ATM at night, when...")
* "What You Can Do!" section
* Reminding people to always be curteous when contacting their Reps

The Bad:
* They didn't mention the public hearing date! D'oh!!!
* Their URL is hard to remember. Meaning, nobody will remember to go to their website.
* For the "Contact your reps!" section, they send people to http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/ns/
   - That is not the complete link to the "Who is my Leg?" page
   - They could have just put a big "Who are my reps?" link on their homepage, along with HB160 info, thereby not only making it *easier* for people to contact their Reps, but also driving traffic to their website

[rowland]

Bill text: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/legislation/2009/HB0160.html

1 Physical Force in Defense of a Person. Amend RSA 627:4, II(d) to read as follows:

(d) Is likely to use any unlawful force in the commission of a felony against the actor within such actor's dwelling [or], its curtilage, or in any place where the actor has a right to be.

2 Physical Force in Defense of a Person. Amend RSA 627:4, 111(a) to read as follows:

(a) Retreat from the encounter, except that he or she is not required to retreat if he or she is within his or her dwelling [or], its curtilage, or in any place where he or she has a right to be, and was not the initial aggressor; or

3 Effective Date. This act shall take effect January 1, 2010.

Existing statute: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/LXII/627/627-4.htm

II. A person is justified in using deadly force upon another person when he reasonably believes that such other person:
        (d) Is likely to use any unlawful force in the commission of a felony against the actor within such actor's dwelling or its curtilage.

III. A person is not justified in using deadly force on another to defend himself or a third person from deadly force by the other if he knows that he and the third person can, with complete safety:
       (a) Retreat from the encounter, except that he is not required to retreat if he is within his dwelling or its curtilage and was not the initial aggressor;

http://www.ncpa.org/studies/s181/s181d.html

In 1982, a federal court of appeals said:
. . . [T]here is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen. It is monstrous if the state fails to protect its residents against such predators, but it does not violate the due process clause of the Fourteen Amendment or, we suppose, any other provision of the Constitution. The Constitution is a charter of negative liberties: it tells the state to let people alone, it does not require the federal government or the state to provide services, even so elementary a service as maintaining law and order.17

These rulings are probably consistent with the original intent of the founding fathers. Some legal scholars argue that the framers of the U.S. Constitution assumed that law-abiding people would largely be responsible for their own safety.18 They note that under English common law the sheriff’s main jobs were collecting taxes and enforcing government decisions. Keeping public order was a secondary duty.

Violent crime rates in NH, 2006:

http://www.idcide.com/lists/nh/on-population-2006-violent-crime-rate.htm

[J’raxis 270145]

/bump

Hearing is tomorrow:—
2009-01-29 13:30:00   LOB 202   SUPPORT: 30

[dawn]

I read something that the NRA/GONH doesn't think this bill goes far enough and wants it amended?

[Seth]

I read something that the NRA/GONH doesn't think this bill goes far enough and wants it amended?

Yeah, as I understand it (and I haven't researched it myself), the bill if passed would create an affirmative defense (that one could bring up in court).  GONH wants the bill to shift the burden to the state entirely.

The fact is that the bill is an improvement in the law and should absolutely be supported. 

[J’raxis 270145]

I read something that the NRA/GONH doesn't think this bill goes far enough and wants it amended?

Yeah, as I understand it (and I haven't researched it myself), the bill if passed would create an affirmative defense (that one could bring up in court).  GONH wants the bill to shift the burden to the state entirely.

The fact is that the bill is an improvement in the law and should absolutely be supported. 

Indeed, “not good enough” is a stupid reason to oppose, or fail to support, a bill. First we need to get the concept written into law, which this bill does. Then in a couple years when people have seen the sky hasn’t fallen as a result, tweak it to shift the burden of proof to where it belongs.