Hey, it was over 50 degrees here yesterday afternoon.

Admittedly, we got 6+ inches of snow today.

Hmmmm ok. I am going to presume that your incident was in 1993 ... because in mid-1993 a law was passed that took effect January 1, 1994, that replaced the existing code and made possession of various weapons prohibited ONLY if one was a felon. The law was HB 166 - link is here: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.u...

AFAIK Hampton Beach has not had any other law regarding the possession of weapons. The state of NH does have state preemption on most weapons laws, although I can't confirm for how long that has been the case.

Given that it's been over 10 years, not to mention the fact that the law you were convicted under probably does not exist anymore, my presumption is that you can get your record expunged, assuming you haven't gone on a wild crime spree since then. (Obviously if you pursue this, talk to a lawyer about it, not me, as I am not a lawyer.)

Many states had awful laws regarding concealed carry 20-30 years ago - thankfully that has changed over time. The legislature got constitutional carry passed last year, but it was vetoed by the governor (and probably the same thing will happen this year).

Not sure if any of this helps, but hopefully it does. I know that there are more and more folks in NH trying to get rid of as many of the bad laws as possible, and there has been some success ... hopefully more when the FSP reaches its goal and more folks start moving.

What specific law did they charge you with breaking? The relevant New Hampshire state code is "RSA 159" (you can search for "sword cane" and find any instance of it there. Possession is not prohibited unless you're a felon. If you use it in the commission of a crime, that use is an additional crime. But if you weren't committing a criminal act with it, they should not have bothered you. Nearly all restrictions on knives in NH were repealed in 2010. Chapter 512 of the Hampton Beach legal code creates some requirements re: the selling of martial arts weapons, but does not prohibit the sale nor the possession of these weapons. (This is the law as of March 2011; I do not know what existed prior to that.) So I'd really like to know what it is they charged you with, because as far as I can tell based on your story, there isn't any law you broke.