Keene Sentinel – November 15, 2024
By PAUL CUNO-BOOTH, N.H. Public Radio
To families with loved ones at New Hampshire Hospital, Bradley Haas was more than a security guard. Many got to know him on a personal level while visiting the state-run psychiatric hospital in Concord, recalled Susan Stearns, executive director of the mental health nonprofit NAMI New Hampshire. They “talked a lot about how kind he was and helpful when they would go to visit,” she said. “Particularly the first time, maybe, that your loved ones had such a hospitalization where you had been there, it can seem overwhelming and scary.”
Haas, 63, was fatally shot one year ago on Sunday, when a former patient walked into the lobby of New Hampshire Hospital and opened fire while Haas was on duty. A state trooper shot and killed the gunman, John Madore, moments later. Haas’ killing prompted calls to reform New Hampshire’s gun laws — in particular, a loophole in the background check system that let Madore purchase a firearm, despite a previous psychiatric commitment that should have prohibited him from owning a gun. But in the year since the shooting, state lawmakers have passed no new gun safety laws, while approving a handful of bills that actually expanded gun rights. The most high-profile proposal for reform — a bipartisan House effort to add some mental health records to the federal background check system, as nearly every other state does — was rejected by Senate Republicans in May.
Rep. Terry Roy, a Deerfield Republican and supporter of gun rights, co-sponsored the bill to add psychiatric commitments to the background check system. He said he plans to bring it back in 2025, and said he thinks Haas would still be alive today had that been in place before the shooting.
“I think if you polled citizens of this state [and asked] if they think someone who’d just been released for a dangerous mental health situation should walk right into a gun shop and purchase a firearm, I think the answer would be a unanimous no,” Roy said. But the failure to pass any major changes to the state’s gun laws, even in the wake of a tragedy like the one at New Hampshire Hospital, shows the difficulty of finding consensus on gun safety measures in a state where Second Amendment rights are cherished and ideological divides remain deep and entrenched.
Background-check bill failed, but will return in 2025
In the past year, lawmakers passed a bill extending death benefits to the family of Haas, who previously served as Franklin’s police chief, as well as other state security officers killed in the line of duty. But efforts to pass laws that could prevent troubled individuals like Madore from obtaining guns in the future fell short in the Republican-controlled Legislature. The proposal that came closest to passing was a direct response to the hospital shooting. Madore had been committed to New Hampshire Hospital in 2016, after allegedly attacking relatives and barricading himself in his room with guns. Police also confiscated his firearms as part of that case.
Under federal law, which prohibits anyone who’s been “committed to a mental institution” from possessing a gun, Madore should have been barred from purchasing another firearm. But in 2020, Madore was nonetheless able to buy the gun he used to kill Haas from a Barrington gun dealer, according to the N.H. Attorney General’s Office. That’s because New Hampshire is one of just a few states that does not report information about mental health commitments to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Gun sellers use that system, called NICS, to check whether customers are legally allowed to possess firearms. In the wake of last year’s shooting, two lawmakers who otherwise disagree sharply on gun rights — Roy, the Deerfield Republican, and Portsmouth Democrat Rep. David Meuse — put forward a bill to change that.
The bill would have required New Hampshire to start notifying the NICS system when people are involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility by court order, or found not competent to stand trial. It would not have applied to people who voluntarily seek mental health treatment. The bill also laid out a process by which people could seek to restore their gun rights, once they get better. That was a key provision for mental health and disability rights advocates, who say people can get well and should not permanently lose a constitutional right just because they’ve been involuntarily hospitalized.
The bill passed the New Hampshire House, but failed in the state Senate. Republican senators voted it down amid opposition from gun rights groups and concerns that people’s guns could be taken without adequate due process. “This is … the confiscation of firearms from individuals based on psychological and bureaucratic assessments,” GOP Sen. Bill Gannon of Sandown said in May. “It’s bypassing due process that should accompany any infringement on our constitutional Second Amendment rights.” Roy said that’s a mischaracterization of his bill. He stressed that no one would lose their gun rights unless they’d gone through a court hearing and been found by a judge to pose a danger to themselves or others. “I’m going to redouble my efforts to educate everyone that this is not going to impact their Second Amendment rights,” Roy said.
Republican Gov.-elect Kelly Ayotte has also said she would support sending mental health records to NICS, as long as there are adequate due-process protections. “As governor, I will bring people together on both sides of the aisle, because those records should be in the system,” she said last month in a debate hosted by NHPR. But with Republicans strengthening their control of both chambers of the New Hampshire Legislature in last week’s election — including a 16-8 supermajority in the state Senate — the bill faces an uncertain fate. Incoming Senate President Sharon Carson declined to comment before first seeing the text of the legislation.
Brittany Cantara, who owns Cantara Concealment, a gun store in Concord, said she’d like the state to start reporting mental health commitments to the federal database, as long as people’s privacy is safeguarded. (The information submitted to NICS includes only basic identifiers like name and Social Security number, not any medical information.) “It’s a pretty good system overall,” she said. “But, you know, it’d be good to close some of the gaps that we have in reporting.”
Lawmakers bolster gun rights, reject ‘red flag’ law
The New Hampshire Hospital shooting — and the deadly mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine one month earlier — hung over State House debates on other gun policy last year. Gov. Chris Sununu this year signed several small changes proposed by gun-rights advocates: a bill that bars employers from forbidding employees from storing guns in locked vehicles; another granting immunity to law enforcement officers who issue gun licenses “in good faith”; and a third that strengthens privacy protections around gun sales. Meanwhile, lawmakers rejected several measures to tighten gun restrictions, including an “extreme risk protection order” bill, often referred to as a “red flag” law. The bill would have allowed concerned family members or police officers to ask a court to temporarily restrict someone’s access to firearms if they’re believed to pose a risk to themselves or others.
Stearns, of NAMI New Hampshire, said her organization would likely support Roy’s background-check bill, as long as it still includes a process for people to remove themselves from the system.
She also expressed support for the extreme risk protection order bill and a second measure that failed this year: creating a voluntary “do not sell” list for firearms, which people could add themselves to if they have concerns for their own well-being. She said both could help reduce suicides, which account for the vast majority of gun deaths in New Hampshire. “We have folks here at NAMI New Hampshire who are individuals living with mental illness, who say things literally like, ‘I know I should never allow myself to own a firearm because of my past history’ — frequently around suicidal thoughts,” Stearns said.
She also called for the creation of a state panel to examine cases where law enforcement uses deadly force against a person with mental illness. The goal would not be to evaluate the officer’s conduct, which falls to the attorney general’s office. Rather, it would look at where someone may have fallen through the gaps and whether there were opportunities to intervene earlier.With debates about gun policy likely to return to the State House next year, Stearns cautioned against stigmatizing people with mental illness. Statistics show the vast majority of people with mental illness are not violent. “I would ask people to tone down the rhetoric,” she said, “and remember that the person you’re talking to may themselves, or have someone they love very much, who’s living with a mental illness.”