New Hampshire RSA 265:95 forbids any aftermarket tint on the driver or passenger side windows. The law is primarily enforced during the yearly inspection and will cause a vehicle to fail the safety inspection.

States have progressively been moving to allow aftermarket tint on windows. In 1993, sixteen states did not allow any tint on these front-side windows. Now, only four states have this restriction. New Hampshire is one of the holdouts. The other states are Vermont, Michigan, and New Jersey. In NH, only the rear windows are allowed to be tinted, with the restriction that at least 35% of light must enter the vehicle. The front-side windows are not allowed to be tinted at all, other than what’s supplied by the vehicle manufacturer. In the 32 other states, tinting to 35% or darker is allowed on these front-side windows.

I proposed HB317 so New Hampshire can join 32 other states in allowing 35% tinting on the front-side windows. Legislators have introduced bills like this for years in NH, and they always seem to get voted down, but why?

The State Police usually present three reasons which give legislators pause. First, is that not being able to see into the vehicle presents a danger to the traffic officer. Second, the aftermarket tint film makes the window harder to break in the case of an emergency. The film on the outside of the glass holds the pieces together while the factory tint is located in the center of the glass, is thinner, and breaks easier. Finally, they say that it is dangerous because window tint might hinder nonverbal communication between drivers and other people on the road.

The biggest hurdle to overcome may be the claim that window tint puts the lives of officers in danger, and legislators do not want to take that chance. However, this claim seems to be based on anecdotal evidence and not hard data.

I tried to quantify the danger to officers from not being able to see into a vehicle to determine whether or not the claim could be substantiated with hard facts. I acquired information about every officer death from 1993-2017 and limited the data to traffic stops. What jumped out at me was that during traffic stops, the danger from the passing vehicles was, by far, the most significant threat to the officer.

After breaking the deaths down by state and cross-referencing when the 12 states began allowing tint, I found no correlation of officer deaths. In fact, I found 12 other states that had not had a single officer death during a traffic stop, once I removed any danger from outside the vehicle from the numbers. It could be that dark tink increases stress on an officer, which could turn into a dangerous situation for the vehicle occupants involved in a traffic stop. But, the numbers I found did not indicate a decrease in officer safety due to threats coming from inside the vehicle. Besides, cars from states that allow the front-side windows to be tinted can still visit New Hampshire, so officers need to be able to handle that situation whether our state allows front-side tinted windows or not.

If it’s true that aftermarket window tinting slows down the removal of vehicle occupants in an emergency, then that’s a risk the owner should be able to take. Life is full of risks. Outlawing the acceptance of that risk is government overreach.

Finally, with regards to non-verbal communication at stop signs, the committee tried to address that concern with an amendment that increased the required light transmittance for the front-side windows to 70%. This is a very light tinting in which a person is still quite visible. Tinting to 35% would only make a person’s outline visible, depending on the light. Since hand waving is the most common nonverbal communication, I believe this concern could be addressed with either tinting option, which is better than none at all.

My hope is that, with passage of HB317, NH can finally increase window tinting options for consumers, as seems to be the trend in the rest of the country. While the bill doesn’t allow as many options as I would like, I think it has the best chance to make it legal for residents to install less expensive, aftermarket tinting. Why should we have to buy very expensive, factory-made tinted glass in order to have a much cooler ride?

A bill filed by five House Democrats could affect one of New Hampshire’s primary tourist attractions: The skiing industry. The current 9% tourist sales tax already applies to all prepared food, hotels, and rental cars. In an effort to increase sales tax revenue for the State and help fund education for underprivileged children and prison inmates, Democrats are hoping to extend that 9% tax to include skiers and snowboarders visiting New Hampshire’s ski resorts.

House Bill 1652 requires all ski resorts to obtain a license, display the license, and begin to collect a 9% tax on ski lift tickets, which must be given to the state government. Understanding how skiers would react to this new 9% tax, the sponsors of the bill mention that the revenue from the new tax would fund ‘education’ for ‘the poorest children in New Hampshire.’

If this Democrat bill passes the Democrat-controlled House and Senate and is signed into law by Governor Sununu, we can all expect an immediate 9% increase in the cost of our lift tickets.

People alter their behavior when incentives or disincentives change. A 9% increase is a significant change.

New Hampshire ski resorts earn millions of dollars from tourists who ski and snowboard in our state. Once out-of-state residents learn that their lift tickets will be at least 9% more expensive than they were last year, some could decide to not return, thus diminishing the important revenue that ski resorts make. This could force New Hampshire’s fifteen (15) ski resorts to increase their prices in order to make up for lost revenue, a considerable unintended consequence.

If you have an opinion on this bill, make sure to contact the sponsors, the House Ways & Means Committee, and your own legislators.

Libertarian types are as selfish as they come.  All they want is to be left alone. They don’t believe anyone should do anything for anyone else.  They just don’t care…

Heard that before?  Me too; it seems to be a fairly common assumption.  As a liberty lover in what could be called a “statist” job, my work friends seem to default to that notion every time I open my mouth.  But why? Where does it come from? And how true is it?

A lot of it starts with self-ownership.  It is one of the founding tenets of libertarianism, and it gets a very bad rap.  Briefly, it is the idea that individuals have exclusive rights over their persons and their labor, and that no other individual has any rights to another’s person or labor without permission.  Intuitively, this makes a lot of sense to a lot of people. Who should be allowed to tell you how you should spend your efforts or use your body?

The conclusions that arise from this foundational belief are the basic principles of liberty-minded living.  Minimal government, market forces allowed to work unfettered, people free to do, act, buy, and sell as they please.  What is not included in this philosophy is a concept of community goals or duties. If I own my own person and my own labor, how can anyone, the government included, all of a sudden take the fruits of that labor without my consent to use on causes to which I do not subscribe?  Morally, the government cannot force me to involuntarily pay to support, say, the NEA, just as you cannot force me to hand money to you at gunpoint. Under the concept of self-ownership, both are violations of my rights.

For many, this seems as incongruous as self-ownership at first seemed reasonable.  Surely, we owe our fellow man something. Surely we are to love our neighbors, look out for each other, and make this world a better place, right?

It is true that there are no collective duties imposed on individuals by the principle of self-ownership.  Our only moral imperative is to respect the rights of all other individuals. But that does not preclude the liberty-minded individual (or anyone else) from doing something beneficial to those around her.  We do not see each other merely as silos of inviolate individual rights. We are free to to make positive impacts on our communities according to our own means, values, and understanding.

After all, isn’t the essence of those activities that we consider morally “good” the fact that we are not required to do them?  There is nothing “good” about respecting the rights of others. No one gets keys to the city for not killing someone, not stealing cars, not defrauding the elderly.  Doing “good” is doing for others when no one is making you.

Republican or Democrat, left or right, red or blue, I can almost guarantee that there is some cause over which the government has taken ownership that you are angry about supporting with your own taxes.  Be it the military-industrial complex, social services, or the Wall, everyone has a bone to pick. Some overreach is surely stuck in your craw. And so, from either side, you already have a visceral sense of the violation that the government has levied upon you by taking up these causes without your consent.

Take it a little further.  Everyone who can admit that there is a facet of life where the government should not be meddling has the right idea.  The problem is that, once you admit that, you have to face the possibility that many of the things you are happy the government is doing represent violations for someone else.

The conclusion some jump to from this point is that if we stop those violations, and remove all those artificial duties from the government, nothing will get done.  Well, if the government formed the Department of Household Suction tomorrow, would you conclude that no one but the government could ever make or sell a vacuum? Of course you wouldn’t.  Let’s move on.

The liberty-minded person is not always a self-absorbed loner in a fortified bunker.  I mean, she can be, if that is her thing. But she can also be passionate about education, concerned for the environment, or sensitive to the needs of the less fortunate.  We are public school teachers, charitable donors, and community volunteers. Some of us believe employees should be better compensated, and pay our employees more or provide more comprehensive benefits.  Some of us believe the environment is valuable and should be protected, and patronize businesses with sustainable practices. We don’t need to wait for laws to force us to make these choices. Believe in the things you value, but acknowledge that you cannot force others to value the same things.  Rather, choose to celebrate each person’s freedom to impact the world in her own way. Your power to effect positive change, in concert with those in your community that share your values, is a wonderful thing that should be treasured. And it will always be greater than a distant group of uninvested bureaucrats with no incentive to succeed.

It is the wish of every liberty-loving citizen to be free.  Not only free to preserve what is hers, but free to shape her community in a positive way according to her own values.  We must stop mistaking moral goods for moral imperatives, and stop imposing those false imperatives on our neighbors. We are using the government to force people to value the same causes that we value, and the result is ineffective, expensive, and a violation of our most basic rights.  Let us instead have the courage and compassion to choose liberty, not only for ourselves but for our fellow man, so that we can all be free to do the good in our hearts.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of the New Hampshire Liberty Alliance.