New Hampshire Firearms History
-
Long article, so buckle up — there's a lot here worth chewing on.
Most people know "Live Free or Die" the way they know the Gadsden flag — as a bumper sticker or a range bag patch. The actual history behind it is something else entirely.
"Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils."
— General John Stark's toast, 1809, which became New Hampshire's state motto in 1945Stark wrote that at 81 years old, too sick to make a reunion, so he sent the line in a letter instead. That context changes it — it's not a rallying cry, it's an old soldier's final word on the subject. The kind of thing you'd want engraved on something.
The Fort William & Mary raid is one of the earliest armed acts of rebellion against the British Crown in colonial America, and it happened in New Hampshire.
December 1774 — four months before Lexington. Paul Revere rode 55 miles in winter to warn them, and New Hampshire men didn't sit on it. They went and took the powder. Some of it ended up at Bunker Hill. That's a chain of custody worth knowing the next time someone acts like the Second Amendment is a rural affectation with no serious history behind it.
New Hampshire complied with federal minimums but resisted going further... The cultural divide between New Hampshire and its southern New England neighbors sharpened in the latter half of the 20th century. Massachusetts and Connecticut moved toward stricter firearms regulation. New Hampshire did not.
This is the part that matters if you're watching what's happening legislatively right now. New Hampshire didn't drift into being a low-regulation state — it held its position while its neighbors moved. That's a different thing, and it affects how durable that posture is.
The Free State Project, a libertarian migration effort that selected New Hampshire as its target state in 2003, reflected something that was already true about the Granite State's political DNA — it was already functioning as a low-regulation haven relative to its neighbors.
Worth noting for anyone who thinks constitutional carry in 2017 came out of nowhere. The groundwork was there decades earlier. The 2017 vote was more of a formality than a shift.
Most of us can name the guns we carry or compete with, but we're fuzzy on why certain states ended up where they did on policy. New Hampshire's story is a straight line from Fort William & Mary to Newington — what's the oldest piece of firearms history tied to your own state that actually changed how you think about where the laws here came from?
Read the full article in The Handbook → | By The Boise Gun Club Team
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login