New Hampshire Legislature proposes shortening state motto

 The majority party in the New Hampshire legislature has proposed a more concise motto for the state than the well known, "Live Free or Die."

Free Staters who have been working on making the state into their libertarian utopia since the early 2000s, have had to acknowledge that terminating government services actually harms people. However, because they exalt complete freedom as the highest good, they consider the hardship and death that their obsession will cause is just a necessary price to pay for enjoying the purest liberty. They therefore proposed that the motto should be, "Die Free."

The rest of the majority party, in keeping with the national party's long-standing obsession with funneling resources to the already wealthy, will simply do anything for a tax break. Also, as control freaks who give lip service to freedom while doing their utmost to limit who qualifies to have it, they happily play along with ending vaccine mandates, canceling vaccine clinics during the school day, diverting public school funds to private and charter schools, increasing restrictions on women's reproductive health, discriminating against LGBTQ people in ways that can lead to increased violence and suicide, allowing domestic abusers to keep their firearms, and open carry of firearms everywhere. They are raising funds for the 2026 midterm elections so that they can replace the current Congressional delegation with Republicans who will vote against environmental regulations, and institute laws nationwide to make workplaces more dangerous, power plants and vehicles more polluting, health care more expensive, and food less safe. They propose shortening the motto to just, "Die."

"Let's get real," said one legislator, who declined to be identified. "We have at least two generations in the workforce who will never be able to afford to retire. They might as well go out in a gunfight with their neighbor over an unleashed dog as try to afford assisted living or a nursing home."

Guns are like sex

Republicans in New Hampshire have generally been producing the kind of legislation they produce everywhere else, encroaching on women's rights, gutting public education, chatting about returning to segregated schools, playing games with the tax laws to create the illusion that they're lowering property taxes when they're just shifting the burden to a different column in the ledger... the usual crap. However, they have introduced a bill that favors a controversial position of my own: firearms education.

We live in a country where there are already more guns than people. They're here. We have a whole amendment to the Constitution dedicated to preserving the right of ownership for ordinary citizens. It's been stretched way out of shape to help the firearms industry move vast amounts of merchandise, but the principle unfortunately continues to make sense in our primitive species. Any person should have the right to be armed.

Many of us, myself included, have not prioritized personal weaponry. I mean, I have a couple of firearms, and I've gone to the range as few times, but I can think of a lot of reasons not to be armed. Plus it's expensive and time consuming to become competent and remain in practice. You might think it's as simple as pulling the little lever thingy and whatever you're aiming at troubles you no more, but the device itself requires attentive care and maintenance. Your skills require regular range time. Ammunition itself isn't cheap. If you want more advanced tactical skills, that's another whole layer of training. That's also beyond the scope of what the Republicans and I propose is a good idea.

Here's the thing: guns are a part of the fabric of our society. Refusing to teach young people how they work and how to handle them is the same as insisting on abstinence-only sex education. You can be comprehensively educated about sex and decide to abstain. There are a lot of good reasons to abstain. There are also reasons to participate over a wide range of styles. Deciding from a place of ignorance is never a good idea. So is just learning it on the street.

Educating everyone robs the knowledge of its insider power for the people who had already sought it out. Giving everyone a functional base of exposure to the technology and terminology means that arguments against use have more strength. The aficionados can't sneer at your lack of technical vocabulary. Sure, there will always be higher levels of immersion, and changing slang to try to evade the outer circles. But no one will be completely outside the circle.

Obviously, the teachers have to be well screened, but that's true anyway. And the curriculum has to be scrupulously neutral. So the text of the bill may allow for or even nudge toward a pro-gun bias, and that's not good. But the basic idea is sound.

Guns are widely available. They will remain pretty accessible in this country unless there are some drastic -- and probably undesirable -- changes in government. Sure, we need to tighten up access quite a bit, but it's decades too late to make them all go away.

Even now, Second Amendment folks on the "left" are coming out in response to ICE atrocities, to indicate that the stakes for the front line agents might be higher than the happy hooligans anticipated. It's not a great development, but it does demonstrate that the Bill of Rights cuts both ways.

Levels of training on both sides probably span a range from utter noobs to ex-military or law enforcement. If actual fighting broke out, it would be a mess. That's true of fighting in general. The mess gets worse as the use of weapons increases. But one thing that could cut through the gunslinger fantasies would be actual education. It gives everyone a basic informed vocabulary. It sets a baseline standard for what everyone knows about the uses, dangers, rights, and responsibilities inherent in having and using a gun.

Next, institute my plan for driver education that requires anyone getting a license for the first time to have to use a bicycle for transportation for a full year, whether it's 12 continuous months (impractical with our winters) or just a total of 12 months collected over no more than a three-year period.