CONCORD — A Republican lawmaker took his fight against a rule banning firearms inside New Hampshire’s 400-member House of Representatives to the state Supreme Court on Tuesday, asking it to weigh in on the issue.
For the last decade, rules on allowing guns in Representatives Hall, including the anteroom and public gallery overlooking it, have flipped back and forth, depending on which party held the majority. After four years in the minority, Democrats regained control of the House in 2018, and one of their first actions was to restore the rule that Republicans had thrown out in 2015.
Republican Rep. John Burt, of Goffstown, said the ban was as absurd as banning women or minorities from the House. He sued the speaker of the House of Representatives, but a judge decided to dismiss the complaint, saying that the Legislature had the authority to make its own rules.
“We pass laws that upset half the people in this state. I’ve been a state representative for five years; I’ve had five death threats. I take it very serious that we need the right to protect ourselves,” Burt said outside the courthouse. “I’m hoping that the Supreme Court does get involved and says, ‘OK, yes, the House can make their own rules, but we have to look at constitutionality.’ I have a constitutional right to carry a gun, and the House has taken it away for political reasons.”
In court, Burt’s lawyer, Dan Hynes, said if the court doesn’t have the authority to decide whether anything done by the Legislature is unconstitutional, “there’s no remedy for people.”
He asked the justices to send the case back to the lower court judge to apply the right standard of whether the rule violates the state constitution.
James Cianci, House legal counsel, said the judge recognized the constitutional authority of each coequal branch of government to establish its own internal rules. While he said the court is the final arbiter of the constitution, he argued that it is unnecessary for it to enter into a constitutional inquiry of the gun rule.
Associate Justice Gary Hicks noted the House has rules on decorum, speech and other aspects of behavior. He said if the court interferes on the gun issue, it could be “opening the floodgates” to interfering, based upon First Amendment concerns, with those rules. Cianci agreed.