“If you all are reading the newspaper, our rights are being attacked again,” N.H. state Rep. Al Baldasaro (R-Londonderry) tells the crowd gathered in front of the capitol building in Concord. “Representative Shurtleff has filed a bill to repeal your right to protect yourself, wherever you have the right to be.  ... We need to make sure we load the State House to protect our rights. We will not give up one inch of our rights here in New Hampshire.”

His rallying cry is met with hoots, cheers and applause from the crowd gathered in front of the State House at the “Gun Appreciation Day” event on Sunday, Jan. 13.

The group has gathered to demonstrate support for gun rights nationally and locally and to protest against proposed stricter gun control measures in the wake of the shooting of 20 children and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. on Dec. 14.

But nothing is as simple as it seems. The day of the rally was chosen by promoters of  “Gun Appreciation Day,” a web site calling for gun rights activists to rally at state capitols around the country in response to suggested federal gun curbs. Who raised the alarm? Not local gun owners, but a website put together by Political Media, a “Republican New Media consulting firm.”

Baldasaro encouraged the local crowd to show its support for the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law. Passed by the Republican-led legislature in 2011, Stand Your Ground expanded the right of self defense in one’s home, known as the Castle Doctrine, to the broader right to use deadly force when one feels threatened anywhere he or she has a right to be.

It, too, is the result of a national campaign aimed at influencing the conversation in New Hampshire. The Stand Your Ground law came to New Hampshire via ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), a national non-profit largely funded by corporations that provides “model legislation” to representatives in state capitals around the country. Walmart, the nation’s largest seller of guns, was co-chair of ALEC’s Public Safety and Elections Task Force in 2005 when the National Rifle Association brought the idea for Stand Your Ground laws to ALEC.

The speakers at the rally took care to be factual while speaking of the right to defend oneself, one’s family and one’s property, citing from the N.H. Constitution and referring to the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution. There were calls for gun education and safety training.

But the role of ALEC in New Hampshire politics was left unaddressed, as was the historic effectiveness of the Castle Doctrine and the mixed motivations of the national gun lobby, which includes large corporate interests. Also unaddressed were the capacity of our health care system to deal with mental illness, as well as the intersection of mental health and gun culture, and the many challenges posed by gun violence, which has taken an estimated 1,100 more lives in the eight weeks since events in Newtown.

The incidents and issues, as well as trends in opinion polls supporting tighter regulations, are all leading to an informal but widespread citizen referendum for the first time in decades, bolstered by advocates leveraging the newly minted resources of social media. This referendum will be decided not by a popular vote, but by the fate of pending legislation at the state and federal level.

On Jan. 15, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, which already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, led bi-partisan efforts in the opening days of the legislative session to fortify New York’s existing assault weapons ban, limit the number of bullets allowed in magazines and strengthen rules that keep the mentally ill from owning firearms.

New Hampshire, traditionally a pro-gun rights state, has already dealt with one gun law during this legislative session. The newly Democratically controlled House has reinstated a rule that bans gun owners from bringing weapons into Representatives Hall and the gallery, reversing a rule set by Republicans during the last session.

But in contrast to Cuomo, newly elected Gov. Maggie Hassan has not announced any new initiatives.

According to a written statement from her communications director Marc Goldberg, Hassan believes “we must always be looking for ways to keep New Hampshire’s citizens safe from harm and that we owe it to those we have lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School and other tragedies to come together and determine how we can make our communities safer and better.

“While other states have their own unique circumstances, the Governor’s focus is on addressing New Hampshire-specific challenges, such as how we identify and treat mental health issues, protect our schools, and ensure an adequate and timely background check process for gun purchases, so that we can continue to improve the safety of our citizens,” Goldberg wrote.

The legislature will look at a handful of gun laws already scheduled for this session, starting with Stand Your Ground. Stephen Shurtleff (D-Penacook) has proposed HB 135 to repeal the law and revert to the state’s previous “Castle Doctrine,” saying Stand Your Ground goes too far in granting civic immunity for citizens using deadly force.

Another proposed law to tighten restrictions is HB 290, which would prohibit an unlicensed person from openly carrying a pistol or revolver in a public building.

Proposed laws to loosen restrictions include HB 451, which would repeal the license requirement for carrying a concealed pistol or revolver. HB 209 would limit the authority of a judge to order a defendant to relinquish firearms as a condition of bail only to those alleged to have committed a violent crime. HB 382 would reduce the nonresident fee for obtaining a license for a pistol or revolver.

All of these laws, related hearings and progress can be tracked at www.gencourt.state.nh.us, and www.legiscan.com.

Guns are popular here. A January gun show in Manchester saw lines out the door and set a new state record for background checks for handgun sales in a single day. State police conducted a total of 611 checks that Saturday, a tally that was 30 percent higher than the record set only in December, the day after the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., and the tally was part of a record-setting year in 2012.

New Hampshire has a reputation for permissive gun rights. In 2011, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was among many groups scoring New Hampshire low on gun control, giving it 6 out of 100 points. The Republican-led New Hampshire legislature pursued a further expansion of gun rights during the past session, though many of those proposals were eventually tabled.

President Obama kicked off the larger national discussion on Jan. 16, outlining 23 actions on his agenda to reduce gun violence in a series of three memorandums. The topics include “Tracing of Firearms in Connection with Criminal Investigations,” “Improving Availability of Relevant Executive Branch Records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System,” and “Engaging in Public Health Research on the Causes and Prevention of Gun Violence.”  The memorandums can be read in full at www.whitehouse.gov.

They deal with new or revised regulations overseen by agencies, new research and reports, and clearer communications. One order directs the CDC and others to resume research into the causes and prevention of gun violence—research that had been stifled with the help of the NRA.

For these policy recommendations, and the call for Congress to pass new laws banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and targeting gun traffickers, Obama was rebuked as a “dictator” by Rep. Paul Broun and accused of “Imperial behavior” by Rep. Darrell Issa. Sen. Marco Rubio accused him of “abusing his power,” and impeachment was mentioned several times.

The response was an indicator of how polarizing the gun debate gets. Of course, it’s not just talk of guns that polarizes us, but our increasing propensity to let ourselves be polarized and politicized on so many issues makes it hard to imagine how this national conversation on guns is going to go.

Larry Hamilton, professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire and senior fellow at the Carsey Institute, studies the phenomenon known as “biased assimilation,” the idea that people are more inclined to accept information that fits with their pre-existing beliefs, to retain or remember things that tend to reinforce their world view, and don’t retain or find reason not to believe things that don’t.

He recently released a study on how our political opinions correlate with our understanding of climate change.

“I think we’re getting worse at that overall. Things that were much closer to broad consensus back in the 1970s—clean air, clean water, protection for endangered species, environmental protections—are very highly polarized and politicized today,” Hamilton says.

He says that’s not due to chance.

“There have been major campaigns kicked off against those successes, and those campaigns have been very effective partly in creating alternative narratives that people could go to that better fit with their politics,” Hamilton says. “I think you can see something like that happening in discussions around guns.”

He says if you imagine two scenarios involving a car, a driver and a gun, one in which the driver heroically staves off a carjacking and another in which the driver commits an act of violence during a road rage incident, our political views often determine which story we’re likely to remember and repeat. “Scaling up from there, people know where to go to find information and scientific-sounding statistics that also sound like Story A or Story B,” he says.

Not everyone does this, but for someone who is inclined to be ideologically motivated, he or she now has access to the internet as an unlimited source of information that will confirm the opinion and prove they were right all along.

“This path is open to more people than it was in the past, and we do see a lot of people doing that. That shows up in my survey as increasing polarization around science and the environment, which didn’t use to be as polarizing,” he says.

So will the gun discussion follow the same arc as the climate debate?

“The depressing thing about some of the climate discussions is the realization that unless there’s a real disaster, many people won’t take it seriously. With the gun issues, the disasters are in a sense smaller and happening all the time. It’s terribly unfortunate that it takes something like Sandy Hook to bring it back onto the front pages, but that does seem to be the way that discourse moves. We’re sort of waiting for disaster to provide enough motivation,” he says.

In New Hampshire, the next opportunity to act will be when the House Criminal Justice and Safety committee plans to review HB 135, the proposed bill to repeal Stand Your Ground, on Tuesday, Jan. 22 at 1:30 p.m.

There are many resources that offer an opportunity to directly learn more about the discussion as it unfolds in New Hampshire and around the country. Anyone can track New Hampshire legislation at www.gencourt.state.nh.us, and www.legiscan.com, or learn more about who represents you and where they stand on the issues at www.votesmart.org. To get an overview of how media is covering the issue in New Hampshire, and upcoming meetings, visit www.livefreeordiealliance.org.

Nationally, learn what the White House is proposing at www.whitehouse.gov, and separate fact from fiction at the Pulitzer Prize-winning www.politifact.com.

Whatever your position, this is going to be the most salient debate on the issue in a generation, and all comers will be enlisting your support.
Baldasaro was unabashed in his plea for action in Concord on Gun Appreciation Day.

“We cannot give up that right, we must stand tall. I’m asking each and every one of you, take a look at your senators, take a look at your legislators, and go after them in the paper,” NH state Rep. Al Baldasaro told the rally in Concord. “Write letters to the editor, say enough is enough, I will not take this no more.”