Independent New Hampshire Journalism · Northfield, NHCorrection and update, Sept. 22, 2026, 9:33 a.m. EDT: This column, published Feb. 9, 2026, misspelled the names of two sponsors of HB 1793 as “Sayra Devito” and “Matt Sabourin.” Their names, as listed on the House roster, are Sayra DeVito and Matt Sabourin dit Choinière; the names are corrected. The column also did not report that the House had passed the bill, 188-165, on Feb. 5, 2026. After publication, the Senate passed a rewritten version, the House rejected it, and on May 21, 2026, the Senate refused a committee of conference, so the bill did not become law, according to the bill docket. A closing paragraph now records those votes.
New Hampshire House Bill 1793 does not protect freedom. It abandons responsibility.
The bill prohibits public colleges and universities from regulating the possession or carrying of firearms and non-lethal weapons on campus. In other words, it strips educational institutions of the authority to set their own safety rules and replaces professional judgment with ideological absolutism.
The sponsors—among them Reps. Samuel Farrington, Sayra DeVito, Michael Granger, Erica Layon, Donald McFarlane, Kristin Noble, Matt Sabourin dit Choinière, and several others—want this framed as a victory for rights. It is not. It is the state forcing risk onto students, faculty, and staff who did not consent to be part of a political experiment.
Colleges and universities are not generic public spaces. They are dense, high-stress environments populated by young adults, many of them living away from home for the first time, navigating mental health challenges, academic pressure, and social volatility. They are also places where alcohol consumption is common, conflicts are frequent, and crisis intervention is already stretched thin.
HB 1793 responds to that reality by saying: institutions may no longer decide how to manage weapons on their own campuses.
That is not liberty. It is compulsion.
This bill rests on a shallow and dangerous premise—that more weapons, and fewer rules, inherently equal more safety. There is no serious evidence supporting that claim in the context of college campuses. What does exist is a long record of campus administrators, public safety professionals, and mental health experts warning that the presence of firearms increases the risk of escalation, accidents, and irreversible harm.
HB 1793 ignores that expertise entirely.
Instead, it substitutes a one-size-fits-all mandate written by lawmakers far removed from the daily realities of campus safety. It treats universities as incapable of making nuanced decisions and treats students as collateral damage in a broader ideological campaign.
There is also a profound hypocrisy embedded in this proposal.
Many of the same lawmakers supporting HB 1793 routinely argue for “local control” in education, housing, and municipal governance. But when local institutions decide that restricting weapons on campus is necessary to protect their communities, that principle suddenly evaporates. Local control is invoked when it enables exclusion or inaction—and discarded when it conflicts with ideological loyalty.
That is not principle. It is convenience.
The moral failure of HB 1793 is not abstract. If a tragedy occurs on a campus stripped of its authority to regulate weapons, responsibility will not rest with administrators who were prohibited from acting. It will rest squarely with the lawmakers who decided ideology mattered more than prevention.
Freedom is not the absence of rules. It is the presence of judgment. HB 1793 replaces judgment with dogma and calls the result liberty.
New Hampshire’s public colleges exist to educate, not to serve as test cases for absolutist theories of gun policy. Students did not enroll to gamble with their safety. Faculty did not accept positions to work under conditions imposed by politicians who will never bear the consequences.
HB 1793 should be rejected not because it is controversial, but because it is reckless. It strips institutions of responsibility while preserving lawmakers’ ability to claim ideological victory—no matter the cost.
A state serious about freedom would trust its institutions to protect their communities. A state serious about safety would listen to experts rather than silence them. HB 1793 does neither.
It deserves to be dismantled—before it dismantles something far more difficult to repair.
What happened to HB 1793: The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee voted 7-6 to recommend the bill, and the House passed it 188-165 on Feb. 5, 2026. On May 14, 2026, the Senate passed a rewritten version, 14-8, that would have barred public colleges from regulating non-lethal weapons on campus or firearms carried by faculty, and set up a committee to study campus carry. The House rejected the Senate version and asked for a committee of conference. On May 21, 2026, the Senate refused, and the bill did not become law.
Sources: HB 1793 bill text as introduced and HB 1793 bill docket, New Hampshire General Court.
Related: “‘Campus Carry’ in New Hampshire: Freedom, Fear, and the Evidence at the Heart of the Debate,” a Granite State Report explainer on the arguments and the research.
Corrections: Granite State Report corrects verified errors promptly and appends a dated note identifying what changed and when. The corrections policy and the corrections register are public, and correction notes are never removed.
