The resounding message under the chapel’s vaulted ceilings was that gun control is not the solution to America’s gun violence problem.
“In the various conversations we’re having in the legislature right now, it is real and true that we have a great struggle not only in Vermont but in our country,” said Rep. Janssen Willhoit (R-St. Johnsbury).
That struggle was evident as ticketed guests made their way into the chapel. Standing silently outside were about two dozen students holding signs with statistics about gun violence and calls for gun control. The students made their way inside for the start of the event. As the speakers began to talk, they stood and turned their backs to the stage. After about five minutes of standing in silence, they filed out of the building.
Willhoit and the other five speakers at the event said new gun laws won’t ease gun violence. Rob Roper, the president of the conservative Ethan Allen Institute, said gun rights advocates should try to shift the political discussion “away from ‘Guns are bad,’” and, “‘No they’re not.’”
Roper suggested Second Amendment advocates pitch other solutions to gun violence, such as limiting the distribution of violent video games.
“Maybe you should have to get a criminal background check to buy … Grand Theft Auto, a very violent video game, first-person shooter,” Roper said, referring to the popular game series.
Roper also said the recent case in Fair Haven in which police arrested a man who was allegedly planning a school shooting was the result of excessive media coverage of the shooting in Parkland, Fla.
“The one in Vermont would not have happened if [the Florida shooting] had not been on the news ubiquitously. These are copycats … and why they’re copying is we give them a platform in the news media,” Roper said. “What if we decided we were going to ban media coverage of these mass shootings to prevent copycat—”
The room erupted in applause, and then Roper finished his point:
“Well, what they’d probably say is, ‘You can’t do that because that’s a violation of our First Amendment.’ And it is! But what comes after the First Amendment?”
(According to a Vermont State Police affidavit, Jack Sawyer’s Fair Haven plot, and his purchase of a shotgun he allegedly planned to use in the attack, pre-dated the Florida shooting.)
News coverage came up repeatedly. Gun Owners of Vermont Vice President Bob DePino said the organization has identified 15 anti-gun newspapers in Vermont “that we know of” and remarked on the volume of news stories about guns. All of them, he said, were anti-gun.
“I just looked at the Burlington paper that shall not be named and noticed 18 gun articles in the last two weeks,” DePino said.
Rep. Patrick Brennan (R-Colchester), another speaker, also named video games as a cause of modern society’s problems.
“Kids today won’t get their ass off the couch,” he said. “We can’t field football teams anymore.”
Just before leaving for this week’s Town Meeting Day break, the House passed a bill that would allow police to take guns from people deemed an “extreme risk” by a court, or at the scene of a domestic violence arrest. The Senate passed a bill with a similar court process for “extreme risk” situations, and a separate bill that would mandate universal background checks and raise the legal age to buy a gun to 21.
Recalling the House’s vote, Brennan said his fellow lawmakers were governing with emotion and getting predictable results.
“We came out with a piece of crap,” he said.
Eddie Cutler, the president of Gun Owners of Vermont, had a different metaphor for the House’s work on its version of the “extreme risk” bill, which had passed the Senate unanimously without any domestic violence measures.
“It was raped in the house,” Cutler said, adding that he thinks House Judiciary Committee chair Maxine Grad (D-Moretown) runs the committee “like a dictator.”
Cutler emphasized the need for an uncompromising view of Second Amendment rights. Lawmakers are taking a “guilty until proven innocent” approach, he asserted. “It’s a witch hunt just like the witch hunts at Salem,” he said.
The speakers also included Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs president Chris Bradley, Gun Owners of Vermont vice president Bob DePino and Vermont Traditions Coalition firearms policy analyst Bill Moore. They all emphasized the importance of voting.
“If you’re not registered to vote you are unarmed in the biggest fight that we face in terms of protecting our Second Amendment rights,” Roper told the audience.
During a Q &A session, UVM sophomore Claire Tellekson-Flash pointed out that the speakers named many proposals that won’t work to curb gun violence, then asked them to name their solutions.
Roper’s answer had nothing to do with guns.
“I think the real solution is going to come from something like school choice,” he said, noting that without it, school systems “trap” students in situations where they feel uncomfortable or ostracized, which can lead them to build up resentment until they come to school with a gun.
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We need to stop looking any and every place but where the base problem of gun violence stems from: too many firearms with too much firepower; and people willing to go to bat to protect the weapons industry that continues to flood our country with these devices designed and intended to kill.
The problem is NOT to big to handle, and the solution begins with holding those who profit from this merchandising of these implements of death legally and financially responsible for their actions. It’s called personal and business responsibility (you know – that “invisible hand” of Adam Smith fame).
The one positive thing that came out of this firearms love-fest is the statement by a Republican supporting our right to vote in Vermont. Most national Republicans are doing everything they can to deny the right to vote to as many people as possible.
What he may fail to realize however, is the fact that he and his fellow gun lovers are in the minority and that, if gun laws were written and enacted by popular referendum, they would in all probability be much more restrictive than what the legislature is creating.
The majority of people in this country are sick of watching mass murders enabled by and to some degree inspired by the types of weapons that are being marketed like toys to a society that can’t handle them.
We don’t allow anyone, not even trained racing drivers to operate Top Fuel dragsters, Formula One race cars or NASCAR racing cars on our streets, yet the availability of these weapons is essentially unfettered. Why? How can that be considered reasonable?
The Supreme Court has refused to take on Connecticut’s assault weapons ban and California’s 10-day waiting period. These gun safety laws are considered constitutional.
The Supreme Court, in its Heller decision, declared that “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”…
“Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment , nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
Of course, I’m bloviating and know nothing. Also, everything I said is worthless because I have a screen name. Or I could use words like ‘rape’ and ‘dictator’ and be awesome like Mr. Cutler.
Gun safety laws are coming to Vermont. Get on board, be part of the solution.
“‘I think the real solution is going to come from something like school choice, he said, noting that without it, school systems trap students in situations where they feel uncomfortable or ostracized, which can lead them to build up resentment until they come to school with a gun.” or, you know, we could tackle the rampant economic inequality leads to schools to be so underfunded that teachers have to fundraise for pencils and paper, and create a minimum wage that keeps parents from having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet so they can actually be home with their kids at night, and make healthcare affordable and accessible so that anyone who needs it can get the care they need early on and doesn’t end up self-medicating. But sure (shakes cane on front yard and yells at kids to get off their violent video game playing asses and play football) let’s just let people with the means to use school choice leave behind deteriorating, chronically underfunded public schools with the kids who don’t have the means to use them and then wonder why the violence continues.
Our governor is letting the people in this state down by not keeping his word to the gun owners in Vermont and by not doing anything to keep our kids safe for in the schools…
What he is attempting is to give a warm fuzzy feeling to those that are screaming out for something to happen..
What is being proposed in this state does absolutely nothing to resolve the problem of school shootings
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbi…
A kid was just arrested in a Utah school with a homemade bomb. Gun laws aren’t going to solve our problems. We already have thousands of gun laws on the books in this country. We can’t outlaw everything that could be used for mass murder. And outlawing stuff doesn’t prevent people from getting it. We have a violent culture.
I was going to say that I find it truly laughable but actually, despicable is really a better word, at how these children are used as pawns in this little chess game of political agendas and how the children themselves are so emphatic & emotional about their safety, especially regarding a subject where they have no understanding at all, yet I have not yet seen even one single instance where these kids have accepted any personal responsibility in these tragedies at all.
Each and every one of these school shooters has gone in looking to extract revenge on a system and people that have wronged them in some way. More often than not they have a specific target list of other kids & school faculty they intend to get. Then, as usual, the blame is passed along from one to another complicit parties till it finally gets to the black metal thing that is such a convenient scapegoat.
Scroll down.
Not once ever have I heard it talked about why the shooter was so angry, what set him off, what did the other kids do to him that made him literally lose control. Not once has it been discussed, how the kids in school subjected the shooter to constant, daily ridicule & torment that in other terms could easily be construed as torture. Never once has little miss “what do you need an AR-15 for” fessed up about how she belittled and tormented the shooter endlessly and thought is was funny. How she was so popular that she was just beyond reproach in her actions or how everyone else just let it happen and did nothing. Then they stand there holding signs blaming “The NRA” as if they could fill an index card with what they know about the NRA or its membership.
Not once has it been discussed by the school administrators calling for action of how they and their teachers watch kids do this to each other all day long and never do a thing about it, then conveniently place the blame on every gun owner in the country because that was the weapon the kid who felt backed against a wall chose when he finally blew his cork.
And not one single time has Seven Days altered their agenda to report on any of the above.
Hi Sons of Liberty,
Are you suggesting we put more funding towards schools, keep classroom numbers low so that teachers can build relationships with their students to prevent bullying? Raise the minimum wage so that children dont go hungry? Offer universal medical care so that children and families can stay healthy, physically and mentally? If so, I agree, and maybe next year consider not voting for Governor Scott, who believes our schools are already over-funded.
First off the student that’s holding the sign which states “41 Mass shooling in 2918”.. Where, When, By Who, give me facts, or did she pull this out of her butt??
Here’s another tidbit
Vermont, conversely, has never had any gun-control laws. Its constitution boasts a bluntly worded provision in Chapter I: The people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State. This is backed up by a set of watertight statutes commonly referred to as the sportsmens bill of rights. Together, the provisions have ensured that gun control remains all but impossible.
Not only do anti-gun legislators in Montpelier have their work cut out by the states impenetrable charter, but local governments are hamstrung by it too. No county or city can pass gun restrictions into law without the permission of the state government and that permission is never forthcoming. Indeed, even if it were to be granted, any limitations would likely be struck down by the judicial branch. The states supreme court has held that all regulation of the manner in which arms may be borne is flatly unconstitutional. In consequence, Vermonters may not just carry concealed weapons without a permit, they may carry weapons openly on their hips, too. Short of a constitutional amendment, lesser gun-control measures appear not to have a chance in the state.