Chaos erupted outside the New Hampshire statehouse this week when pro-gun protesters showed up at a gun control rally — and one of them ended up getting zapped with a Taser and then arrested.
The group of gun rights protesters had showed up at a Concord gun safety rally, organized by Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, on Tuesday. There, they heckled and shouted down a man named John Cantin, who was speaking about how his daughter was shot and killed by her estranged husband. He has testified in favor of stronger penalties for domestic violence and assault.
As Cantin was speaking out for stronger anti-violence measures, the group of pro-gun counter protesters started chanting the last name of Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), who is weathering blowback from Bloomberg’s group after voting with the National Rifle Association against legislation to require background checks for commercial gun sales.
Ayotte is high on Bloomberg’s target list because she’s the only senator in the Northeast to vote against the Senate gun legislation and because her Democratic-leaning state is supportive of closing loopholes in the background check system.
In a video of the event, one man can be seen shouting at Cantin, calling his speech “propaganda shit.” (The video was uploaded by GraniteStateProgress.)
Then in a different video, a protester who appears to be the same one that shouted at Cantin, and who was identified by the local Patch.com as 52-year-old Daniel Musso of Brentwood, was brought to his knees and shocked with a Taser by Concord police after allegedly resisting their efforts to detain him.
The ugly incident has been lost in other news this week from the MAIG-organized rally. It was at the same rally where volunteers, family members and survivors of gun violence read names of victims who were killed in shootings since the Newtown, Conn. elementary school massacre. One of the names they read was suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who was killed in a confrontation with police while on the run. Bloomberg’s organization apologized for including his name, saying Tsarnaev was “absolutely not a victim” and “it should not have happened.”
