Free Towners began to show up “with a gun under each arm,” as one resident told me, at the general store and at the town transfer station (where residents bring their trash, because town taxes do not fund a municipal pickup service). At Grafton’s church-based town meetings, the once-civil tone of discourse became strained, as citizens debated amendments and motions under the double scrutiny of Free Towners openly displaying 9 millimeter handguns and armed officers from the Grafton County sheriff’s department, which decided it had better send someone, just in case.
