AP Photo/John Locher, File

New Hampshire’s state motto is “Live Free or Die,” and many residents hold that statement near and dear to their hearts. Others, however, don’t. They moved into the state for low taxes and now are doing everything they can to turn the state into the cesspool they left in the first place.

Among the many measures they are demanding are gun control, the lack of which helped New Hampshire achieve a fairly low crime rate. But that doesn’t matter to those who relocate and try to shift the state into a progressive paradise.

However, the same group who gave state lawmakers pearls is pressing for the governor to stand firm on his promise to oppose gun control.

Gun rights activists held a press conference on April 25, 2019, at the Legislative Office Building and then met with the governor’s office to request that he veto bills they said would put women and schools in the Granite State in danger. The Women’s Defense League of NH and a few of their supporters in the Legislature submitted two boxes of postcards as well as two signed posters requesting Gov. Chris Sununu “hold the line” against the bills. Specifically, members of the organization were critical of HB 109, a background check bill, HB 514, a waiting period bill, and HB 564, which seeks to ban weapons from schools.

Susan Olsen of the Women’s Defense League of NH noted that the bills were not about safety but “served a progressive agenda of citizen disarmament.” She called on Sununu to veto the bills and fulfill a promise he made after he was first elected to preserve the rights of Granite Staters.

“There are so many bad ones,” State Rep. Jeanine Notter, R-Merrimack, added saying the anti-2nd Amendment bills “criminalize law-abiding citizens.”

Notter spoke specifically about the HB 564 and noted that there had been no school shootings in New Hampshire, one of the safest states in the nation.

“I look forward to seeing our governor take out his red pen and veto, veto, veto, every one of these bad gun-grabbing bills,” Notter stated.

The group wanting to remind Sununu of his campaign promises is a worthy goal and one that I’d like to remind Sununu of as well. While I’m not a New Hampshire voter, I am read by an awful lot of them. I’d much rather tell them how their governor stood firm in defense of their civil liberties rather than caved on such a fundamental issue.

Frankly, the entire state should be concerned about the influence of out-of-state money in funding an ideological movement set to dismantle civil liberties throughout the state.

Oh, that’s right. Gun grabbers don’t think gun rights are real rights. They never do. It’s how they rationalize restricting civil liberty.

It’s like how they pretend the First Amendment doesn’t protect certain speech. It’s how they can tell themselves they still believe in rights while also working to restrict them.

What Gov. Sununu needs to do, in my not-so-humble opinion, is veto the bills hard, fast, and brutally. Send a message that this won’t be tolerated in New Hampshire.

Then it’s on the voters to do the same thing next election cycle.