I come to supporting robust federal gun control late. [View all]

[cali]

I'm a Vermonter. We have fairly high gun ownership rates and the lowest rate per 100,000 residents of gun murders and the lowest rate of gun crimes. Fine. That's nice. But like too many Vermonters, my smug pride in the low rate of gun crime, and my knowledge of so many non-nut gun owners (and yeah, I know some real gun nuts, too), led me to a lackadaisical self-serving position on gun control: "leave it to the states".

That started to change after Newtown. I realized with some degree of discomfort, that guns sold in Vermont are easily transported to other states where they are used to commit violent crimes, and I know that Vermont has a high suicide by gun rate. I know it deeply and personally. Twice over the past decade I've been in the position of holding on to guns from people who were suicidal. Last year, my ex-brother-in-law, someone I never lost touch with and who was a sweet, gentle man, shot himself in the head and died. I think him every time I get in my car because it was his.

Admittedly, despite living here for many decades and knowing many people who have guns, I know little about them. But I don't understand why people own assault weapons- aside from that they enjoy shooting them. I've never known anyone who brought one to hunting camp. And hunting camp is a huge tradition here.

The percentage of Vermonters who own guns is 42%, making it 14th highest in the country. It's true Vermont has the laxest gun laws in the nation and always has.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States_by_state


But we can't continue to be so insular and so cavalier about it- not in the face of the numbing reality of mass shooting after mass shooting.

We need uniformity. We need federal gun control. We need to get assault weapons off the streets. And why people shouldn't be required to have a license for a gun is a mystery to me. I know I need to know more, research further, but I know that a nation awash in guns, leads to murderous tragedy after murderous tragedy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_Vermont

Vermont's Long Strange Trip to Gun-Rights Paradise

Why the Green Mountain State and its singular history are to thank for new laws that allow the concealed carry of guns without a permit.

Last January, the New Hampshire Senate Judiciary Committee held an open hearing to consider SB 116, a bill that would have repealed licensing requirements for carrying a concealed handgun and enshrined into law a principle that has come to be known by gun advocates as “constitutional carry.” Anticipating a crowd, the Judiciary Committee staged the hearing in the Statehouse’s Representatives Hall, where the five presiding senators patiently listened to a full afternoon of passionate and sometimes shrill testimony. In urging passage of the bill, some supporters described the vindictiveness of small-town police chiefs, framed uninhibited gun ownership as a way to prevent domestic violence and rape, and delivered history lessons on the gun-hating ways of Adolf Hitler. But many of the bill’s backers opted for a more reassuring form of persuasion. Permitless carry was nothing radical, they said, and to see how it could work, one only needed to do was look a scant 60 or so miles to the west.

“Vermont, for over 220 years, has never had permits, has never had registration, and has never had any serious gun control laws,” Ed Cutler, president of Gun Owners of Vermont, told the New Hampshire senators. “And for 220 years, Vermont has been the safest place in this nation and one of the safest places in the world.”

<snip>

read:https://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/vermont-gun-rights-constitutional-carry/