I admire them, but they are not the smartest people. This should happen in municipalities that have no zoning. Those are the most free. Its a more solid foundation to build on. People in no-zoning municipalities have a long and vibrant history of active involvement in successfully opposing government encroachment. Missouri, for instance, has many municipalities with no zoning. I am sure there are others though.
Grafton NH. No zoning, the planning board is controlled by free staters and friends. Someone actually got their house plan on a paper napkin (they drew a square) approved, just to prove it could be done. Just a few more free staters moving there and the select board could be solidly pro-liberty. There are other places on NH with no zoning, and a few with no property taxes (combine that with no state income tax and no general sales tax).
Here's a few illustrative anecdotes from Deerfield NH (not the freest place in NH, but indicative of general freedom level).
I built a house across a small pond from the town school. One day one of my roommates was out back shooting at a pile of wood (he's a gun guy and was just practicing). A cop came around the house and my friend waved and said "hi". The cop just waved and said "Someone reported gunfire near the school, so I just had to check it out." The cop then turned around and walked away, and my friend kept shooting.
Another cop incident was when one of the roomies applied for his concealed carry. He paid the $10 and filled out the form at the police station. The next day a cop showed up at the house. We were wondering what for, but he was just bringing the approved license to the guy.
Later on we realized we could use a better berm to shoot into, so we started building one. Didn't ask for permission, just started cutting down trees, moving logs, piling up dirt, etc. A friend (not a free stater but a local) brought over his excavator for free to help. We built up a pretty good berm and started using it every Sunday for what we called "church" AKA church of the gun or church of John Browning. FYI, this was on a 2.2 acre lot.
Anyway, we didn't have any problems for over a year, then one Sunday someone appeared at the door. She was very anti-gun, being a nurse that worked at a trauma center and had been PTSD'd too much. Apparently she'd been spending almost a year going to the police, the town select board, anyone she could to try to get us to stop shooting. They'd all told her there was nothing they could do (and some likely told her they probably wouldn't even if they could). But it turned out she was someone I had met and friended while out walking my dog, so she relaxed and we worked out a deal. She's do all her shopping on Sundays so she'd be out of town, and we'd limit our shooting to Sundays for just a few hours.
If you want proven success, you might check out the NH Liberty Alliance (nhliberty.org). The NH legislature is the easiest to get elected to (about a dozen free staters are currently serving, including a guy who ran as an anarchist). Just check out Jenn Coffey's successes - she got rid of all knife laws in NH.
There's so much going on here that you can't keep track of it all. And we're not even to the point where people are supposed to start moving. Just imagine when the free state project hits its goal of 20,000 signers and the real migration begins.
So yeah, NH might not be the freest state for some particular issue, but overall it is not only the best state in the U.S. to go to but its also the one where you're most likely to see progress in the liberty direction.
http://freestateproject.org/FYI, I'm mover #103 (out of over 1,000 so far) and I've found a lot of benefits from being an early mover.
