New Hampshire’s campus carry push just took a gut punch that should serve as a warning shot for the entire 2A community. HB 1793 started as a straightforward measure to let law-abiding adults carry on public-college campuses, yet the Senate stripped the bill of its core provisions before it ever reached the floor, effectively killing the reform without ever giving it an honest vote. That kind of procedural sleight-of-hand is becoming the preferred tactic of anti-gun legislators who know they can’t win on the merits, so they quietly neuter legislation and then claim they “considered” it.

The move matters far beyond the Granite State. New Hampshire has long been one of the more permissive shall-issue environments in the Northeast, yet even here the higher-education lobby and nervous university administrators can still exert enough pressure to keep campuses as soft-target islands in an otherwise armed society. The message to students, staff, and visitors is unmistakable: your right to self-defense ends at the edge of the quad, no matter how many active-shooter drills administrators schedule or how many “See Something, Say Something” posters they plaster on the walls. That contradiction is becoming harder to defend as more data shows armed citizens on campus do not produce the bloodbaths opponents once predicted.

For the broader pro-2A movement, the takeaway is tactical rather than philosophical. Campus carry has passed in states where advocates refused to accept half-measures and kept relentless pressure on both chambers; New Hampshire’s experience shows what happens when a bill is allowed to be hollowed out in committee. The fight now shifts to 2025 elections and primary challenges against lawmakers who chose political cover over constitutional carry. Until those seats flip, every college town in the state remains a patchwork of “gun-free” signage that only law-abiding carriers will obey—exactly the scenario the Second Amendment was written to prevent.