House kills ‘red flag law’ bill allowing removal of firearms during mental health crises

Rep. Terry Roy, a Deerfield Republican, speaks against a bill that would create "extreme risk protection orders" allowing a court to require the removal of firearms from someone deemed a danger to themselves or others, Feb. 12, 2026. (Photo by Ethan DeWitt/New Hampshire Bulletin)

The New Hampshire House voted to kill a bill to create a “red flag law” allowing courts to order the surrender of firearms by people deemed a danger to themselves or others, after Republicans argued it would trample on individuals’ rights and not solve mental health crises.

In a 206-153 vote, the Republican-led House defeated House Bill 1642, with eight Democrats joining all Republicans in voting yes. 

The bill would have allowed a family member, household member, intimate partner of a person, or a police officer to tell a state circuit court they believe that person poses a “significant risk” of causing injury to themselves or others by possessing or acquiring a firearm. The petitioner would need to provide a written affidavit of their allegations signed under oath.

Under the bill, if the risk were deemed “immediate,” the court could issue a “temporary extreme risk protection order” that would empower law enforcement to remove firearms from the person’s possession without notifying that person in advance. The court would be required to hold a hearing within seven days in which the respondent could argue against the removal of firearms. After that hearing, the court could issue a longer-term order that would prohibit the respondent’s firearms for up to a year, the legislation states.

The bill’s proponents said the law would provide a meaningful point of intervention to prevent tragic outcomes. And they noted that a provision in the bill would allow for the prosecution of people who submitted false reports of danger, which they said would protect against abuse. 

In a speech on the House floor, Rep. Loren Selig, a Durham Democrat, brought up an August 2025 tragedy in which authorities say a woman in Madbury, Emily Long, killed her husband and two of her children with a firearm before fatally shooting herself. 

Selig said her daughter had known the family, and that Long had been posting on social media and expressing apparent extreme emotional distress. “But under the way New Hampshire law is currently written, unless she was placed in an evaluative psychiatric hold and determined that she needed long-term care, even when those warning signs were visible, nothing more would be done,” Selig said. 

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Last summer, after news broke of the murder-suicide, Selig had to make what she called “the most horrific phone call of my life,” when she informed her daughter, then a college freshman, that most of the family had been killed. 

Had there been a red flag law in New Hampshire, Long’s distress could have led to a court order to temporarily remove her access to firearms until she received adequate mental health care, Selig said.

“HB 1642, is about prevention,” Selig said. “It’s about giving families, communities, and law enforcement a chance to act before tragedy strikes.”

But Rep. Terry Roy, a Deerfield Republican and the chairman of the House Criminal Justice and Public Policy Committee, said allowing a court to deprive a person of firearms without their ability to contest the order in court would be a breach of due process.

And he also said the bill would not directly help people in a mental health crisis. 

“What this bill proposes is to allow law enforcement to break into their home, take all their firearms, and leave the door swinging on one hinge,” he said. “There’s no mental health provided for them. They’re just left there.”

Roy argued the existing laws allowing for a person to be involuntarily committed to a hospital if that person is deemed a danger to themselves or others — a process that requires a court hearing allowing that person to contest their commitment — is already a sufficient tool to address a mental health crisis. 

All that the red flag law would do, Roy argued, “is take their property and leave them alone.”

The bill’s defeat follows a yearslong trend in which state Republican lawmakers have defeated similar bills. In 2020, when Democrats controlled the House and Senate, the Legislature passed a red-flag law, but then-Gov. Chris Sununu vetoed it, arguing the bill would violate the constitutional rights to bear arms and due process.