It’s legal to carry a firearm without a license in New Hampshire, but what rights do residents have when they cross state lines?
A number of Granite Staters are challenging Massachusetts’ authority to enforce licensing requirements for out-of-state residents. While many states recognize other states’ firearms licenses, Massachusetts does not.
The Boston Globe’s Anjali Huynh has been following this story and she joined NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk about her reporting.
Transcript
Let's first talk about the differences in licensing requirements between New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Can you give us the rules in Massachusetts for nonresidents?
So Massachusetts and New Hampshire are a particularly interesting case because they're obviously states that share a border but have drastically different laws. Massachusetts very much prides itself on its strong gun control measures, and that includes very strict licensing requirements both for residents and nonresidents.
Whereas in New Hampshire, of course, the state allows for a permitless carry, meaning that you don't need a license to carry, either openly or concealed, a firearm in New Hampshire. And so for out-of-state residents, like folks from New Hampshire who come to Massachusetts, what that means is that they need to get a nonresident permit and pay that application fee, submit an application, wait a few weeks or so to get the paperwork necessary in order for them to carry their firearm here.
A number of New Hampshire residents are challenging this. Can you tell us more about these court cases?
So both of the cases being heard by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court involved New Hampshire residents who were involved in traffic accidents south of the border. They happened in two separate years, but both of them happened to have their firearms in the vehicles that they were traveling in and did not have Massachusetts nonresident licenses to carry those firearms. So they were charged in the state for carrying those firearms without Massachusetts permits.
This case made its way to the SJC after a lower district judge dismissed those charges, basically saying that their actions were protected by the Second Amendment, that their Second Amendment rights were carried with them across state lines. These were guns that they were legally allowed to have in New Hampshire, and therefore they shouldn't be charged for carrying them into Massachusetts.
Massachusetts, meanwhile, is arguing that the state should be able to implement its own laws. Massachusetts has among some of the lowest gun violence rates in the country, and officials like to attribute that to these very strict gun control measures that they have here. And so, they're making this case, that in order for the state to preserve those gun violence rates, and because there is a process for nonresidents to get licensed in Massachusetts, they should be able to keep this licensing regimen that they have going on here.
How are state law enforcement agencies and national groups getting involved in this fight?
When this case was taken on by the SJC, the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts, a number of groups across the country, both gun rights groups as well as folks that are trying to prevent gun violence, submitted amicus briefs in order to make their voices heard on this case.
In addition to these out-of-state groups getting involved in this case, the attorneys general for the two states have both vocalized their thoughts on this as well. [The] attorney general in New Hampshire, John Formella, submitted his own amicus brief that made this argument that New Hampshire residents, when they leave the state, should not have to “lay down their right to armed self-defense.” Whereas Attorney General Andrea Campbell in Massachusetts is making this argument that the state cannot be subject to another state's laws for a second group of folks who come into the state. They need to be able to ensure that anyone who comes into Massachusetts is someone who meets the state's stricter standards for who is able to carry a firearm here. And so you have this interesting dynamic where the state's two top law enforcement officials are also getting involved and showing the differences between the two states' approaches to gun policy.
