Posted on 10/31/2005 9:43:58 AM PST by neverdem
Police took Michael V. Pelletier’s loaded pistol while he browsed in a bookstore; David K. Ridley’s mistake was to change jackets in a mall parking lot, and Penny S. Dean’s encounter happened during a late-night constitutional on a city street.
Because the New Hampshire Constitution guarantees the right to bear arms — no license needed, unless the weapon is concealed — all three got their guns back within minutes, but the confrontations caused them unease.
“The bottom line is that this type of thing shouldn’t be happening in a state where (carrying a pistol) is perfectly allowed,” said Dean, a lawyer and consulting counsel to Gun Owners of New Hampshire, the gun-rights advocacy organization.
Dean, in a routine followed often in the 10 years she has lived on Warren Street in Concord, was taking a late-night walk on June 16. She was on Pleasant Street out by St. Paul School when state trooper Abbott Presby stopped his cruiser.
“He must have asked me six times for a driver’s license. Then he proceeded to ask what I was doing there and I kept asking him, ‘Are you detaining me?’” Dean said.
She didn’t have her driver’s license. She had a cellular phone, a credit card, her license to carry a concealed pistol and her Glock 23 in a nylon, neon-pink fanny pack.
Dean wrote a letter to state police Col. Frederick H. Booth citing her constitutional rights and complaining of her “detention” by Presby.
“Had I not vigorously, repeatedly and firmly asserted that I wanted to (be) released from this detention I could have been illegally held there indefinitely. I firmly believe that it was only after I explained to trooper Presby that I was an attorney that the impetus to release me awakened,” Dean wrote.
Three months later, state police Lt. Mark J. Myrdek responded, writing that a review of the incident had found Presby’s “actions and conduct were justified, lawful and proper.”
On March 27, 2004, at about 9:15 p.m., three police officers in uniform and two detectives in plain clothes converged on Michael Pelletier as he thumbed through a book at Barnes & Noble store in Manchester. Pelletier and his wife had marked their 11th anniversary with dinner, then gone to the bookstore, where his coat stayed in the car. He had forgotten the change in attire left visible the holstered Glock 30 pistol tucked into his belt at his back.
A shopper telephoned police.
Pelletier said the officers “basically grabbed me by the shoulder, disarmed me and took me out of the store. They ran my license and registration and the serial number on the gun and stood around lecturing me for 20 minutes. It was irritating, but at least I wasn’t arrested.
“What boggled my mind was that out of at least seven officers and dispatchers involved not one seemed to know that open carry is legal in New Hampshire and they basically treated this like they would a felony stop. . . . I wasn’t doing anything illegal. I was minding my own business and I think they could muster the ability to treat me with courtesy and respect in that situation,” said Pelletier, who lives in Merrimack and is a West Coast transplant drawn here by the Free State Project’s pick of New Hampshire in 2003 as the place to promote its minimal-government agenda.
Alan M. Rice of Brookline, the treasurer of the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, has been dealing with gun use safety for 10 years. He is certified as an “instructor-trainer,” qualified to teach even the firearms instructors.
Commenting on what Pelletier has written on the Internet about his bookstore experience, Rice said, “I think he exercised extraordinarily poor judgment on that particular night (because) he had an open-top holster in the small of his back in an unconcealed fashion. . . .
“Most professionals do not carry a gun there because it’s hard to access the weapon and hard to retain the weapon if someone wants to take it away from you.”
Rice prefers holsters with retention features that thwart efforts to extract the handgun, and he advises students to place the belt holster at their right or left side, where it is protected by the arm.
As a firearms instructor, Rice views concealed-carry as “a good way to deter crime because they don’t know who is carrying.”
Though it is legal to carry a gun in plain view, “open-carry is not a bright idea,” Rice said. “You are a target. If someone comes in with criminal intent, the first thing he is going to do is neutralize any person with a weapon who can hurt him.”
Like Pelletier, David Ridley’s move to New Hampshire was inspired by the Free State Project. He came from Texas, which he described as having restrictive gun licensing laws.
“When you come to a place where the right is recognized by government and you’ve never had it before, it’s a right you want to celebrate. At the same time, if you don’t exercise the right, I think you will eventually lose it. So for me, open-carry is primarily a political thing,” said Ridley, who lives in Keene.
Ridley had changed jackets and was engrossed in lettering a placard on the hood of his car in a supermarket parking lot in Salem on March 21 when five police officers, responding to a citizen’s call, asked about the holstered Glock 19 on his hip.
“They said, ‘You alarmed a person who saw the gun.’
“When that is the situation, they have to respond to the call. I understand that, but what was wrong was when they started talking about arresting me when I hadn’t done anything illegal,” Ridley said.
In responding to a letter from Ridley, Salem Police Chief Paul T. Donovan wrote that his officers would continue to respond “with an open mind” when a complaint comes in about someone carrying a firearm.
“In this day and age where people have committed some very violent attacks using firearms, it is understandable that people who do not understand the values of law-abiding firearms owners run scared. We need to work at improving our image with those who don’t understand,” Donovan wrote.
"Commenting on what Pelletier has written on the Internet about his bookstore experience, Rice said, “I think he exercised extraordinarily poor judgment on that particular night (because) he had an open-top holster in the small of his back in an unconcealed fashion. . . ."
ROFLMAO!
I bet the MSM is furious about this--they went to the instructor looking for Rice to say "What were you thinking carrying a gun!?!?!?" Instead, Rice said, "What were you thinking carrying a gun THERE, when you might NEED it?"
I'd just gotten jumped on by somebody else for no real reason other than I disagreed with him.
And your post sounded pretty similar to his crap.
If your post was misunderstood, sorry.
I took that comment completely differently. I got the impression the instructor was critiquing the difficulty of drawing from that holster and saying it was a stupid place to have your handgun stashed!
Yes, yes...
Let me repeat what I said on the Packing.org thread:
The mistakes I made in dealing with my new, unfamiliar holster and my inattentiveness to my surroundings [while they are instructive cautionary points] are beside the fundamental point - it seems evident that the police would have responded identically, if not even more severely (guns drawn, shouting, etc), had I simply printed through my shirt, my jacket had ridden up while reaching for a book, or had been carrying openly in an officially approved thumb-break Bianci leather belt holster.The fundamental point is the inappropriate police actions, in case anyone else missed it.
I'm hoping that this article circulated among New Hampshire police departments both near and far, and that nobody else will be violently confronted for exercising their fundamental right to armed self-defense.
You dun stang them.
"Excuse me are you aware you have a open gun on your back? If someone grabs it and does something bad with it you would be liable."
This sounds like what should have been said to him.
There are lots of states where open carry is technically "legal" per the state constitution but custom and police harassment have dictated that any type of open carry "alarms the people" and is therefore really illegal.
A right, to be maintained, needs to be exercised
Hey, no problem. I didn't mean anything at all by it, simply a "turn of phrase" I think they call it... :)
"The fundamental point is the inappropriate police actions, in case anyone else missed it."
I didn't miss it, and I agree, you should not have been harassed. Imagine what would happen out here in LaLa Land.
SWAT would probable park there APC on you while trying to disarming you!
I'm glad you are big enough to admit your mistake and hope others will learn something from it.
An article like this makes me wish that the hubby had a FReeper account. He'd enjoy the posts.
I think the point is that if officers of state Pro-2nd Amendment organizations can't say something positive about a citizen exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, they shouldn't say anything at all.
Rice had a "falling out" with Go-NH (as well as with other Pro-2nd Amendment orgaizations in his past), so there may be some animosity that he has trouble overcoming with positions on Open-Carry espoused by Go-NH. The record appears to suggest that if one doesn't agree with Rice, he has a tendency to lambast and attack. The fellow certainly does some good, but has a hard time seeing past his limited views on how others should properly exercise 2nd Amendment rights.
One hopes to not see Rice's quotes used by Brady Campaign. It takes only a slight twist to say that if a NH gun-organization officer is critical of open-carry as potentially dangerous to the public, it should be banned.
I 'preciate that. I'm doing pretty well,been quite busy since Katrina and Rita's visit. Then last weekend, as we weree trying to get the vehicles back in shape after their extended use, the tornado touchdown in a trailer park near Evansville,IN got things real busy again- that's only about 50 miles from where I've been staying with family.
Why the LEOs -- of all people -- aren't up to speed regarding laws governing firearm possession in the very state they're working is quite frankly beyond me. Be that as it may it'd appear that's precisely what's happening, eh?
Well, there are quite a few who would try to apply the law as they think it should be read rather than as written, particularly in states without *Official Misconduct* statutes. There's a local gunshop that has a *no loaded guns on premises- insurance requirement* sign posted along with * This means cops too* and a snapshot of his front window after a round from an off-duty cop's Glock .40 passed through it. The first words reportedly out of the shooter's mouth was a hopeful Do we have to report this...?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.