Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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https://www.everytown.org/press/suggest ... n-vermont/
As armed extremism continues to grow and threaten democracy in Vermont and across the country, elected officials in Vermont should confront the open carry loophole and other lax laws that enable firearms to be carried openly in certain public spaces.
For context, Vermont went 227 years without firearm laws. Then, based on a bogus case, Democrats passed a wish list of restrictions that were signed by the governor in 2018. They did not include a ban on open carry, so now they're calling that a loophole.

Vermont Dems, Republican gov impose mag ban, EBCs, ERPOs, purchase age restriction, bump stock ban

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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sikacz wrote: Thu Sep 30, 2021 9:26 pm Everytown and bloomie, elitist entitled assholes.

Yes, Republican Governor Phil Scott signed gun control measures into effect about a year ago. Pushed through by the Bloomie anti-gun groups and probably New Yorkers who retired there.

Heard that the ski industry in Vermont doesn't have enough workers when snow season comes, they lost over 30,000 employees during the pandemic and some resorts might not be able to open. Hopefully gun owners can beat this one back, out of staters telling them how to run their state.
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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Not sure what you mean about a year ago. As DispositionMatrix noted, the changes go back several years. It’s not retirees from out of State who form the support behind the laws, it’s core “progressive” voters in Burlington and a few other areas.

I’ve seen open carry in lots of places that I wouldn’t describe as “hinterlands,” but I and other left-of-center fellow shooters have discussed how it’s frowned upon in Burlington and would even cause alarm among many people here to see open carry in most public places. It’s also socially frowned upon to participate in gun culture beyond hunting. I think there is very little knowledge among the left-leaning population here of the history of gun regulation and even less knowledge of how many of us actually own guns and shoot, because it’s basically kept as a secret to avoid ostracization.

I do enjoy the fact that I can easily buy handguns without any licensing requirement here, can carry when I choose to like on a hike or a nighttime walk with my dog, and can own basically any semi-automatic rifle. When I go to a gun store — and we have several nice ones with knowledgeable staff and good prices — I feel like I’m part of a thriving counterculture.

The laws that irk me are:
1. 10 round mag cap limit for rifles and 15 rounds for handgun mags;
2. No suppressors for hunting (and technically not expressly lawful for home defense);

That’s it. Both of those restrictions strike me as unreasonable and are the result of progressives/liberals who have very little or no contact with shooting, so they don’t understand how I’ll-suited those laws are for achieving the goals they have. They are not accustomed to conversations about what they really want to accomplish and whether addressing root causes may be more effective at accomplishing their goals and avoiding alienating rural voters.

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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Burlington is a progressive city and also a college town, home of the University of Vermont dubbed a "public Ivy" and it probably attracts a lot of out of state students. Everytown touts the new Vermont gun laws as does MOMs, two Bloomie funded anti-gun groups headquartered in New York City. I'd find it hard to believe that their chapters weren't out there lobbying your state legislature on the gun control bills. Urban vs rural have different views on firearms all across the US, same in my state.

https://www.everytown.org/state/vermont/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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I’m not sure what your point is. Yes, I’m sure everytown lobbied here, but they are not the reason those bills received overwhelming support. They received overwhelming support because the vast majority of progressive/liberal voters, who are the most powerful political force in the state, support such laws. If there was a campaign on the ground to gather voter support for this, I sure didn’t even see it. It’s not why it happened here. The fact that we don’t have some of the crazy firearms restrictions that are seen in other progressive/liberal areas is probably because although people here give knee jerk support to “gun control,” it’s also largely perceived as unnecessary because our overall amount of gun violence is low—it’s not a looming issue.

In Burlington, people just started drumming harder about it this year because there were something like 12 shootings, which is apparently a record.

My point is that your post above attributes the changes to some greater influence of Everytown here, which isn’t needed because people here are largely going to support gun regulation at this point; and “retirees from NY,” which, I’m sorry but while some of them may vote with progressives, they really aren’t more than a part of the bigger block of voters from Burlington and the surrounding county who are driving the agenda here.

As far as “out of state students” go, yes of course, the state’s liberal politics are partly attributable to people who move here and stay after college; but that has been happening for a long time, and we only ended up with the gun laws tightening in 2018. Many of the liberals whom I know are ages 30-60 and have lived here for 20-40 years. It isn’t an influx of NY retirees and a horde of Everytown lobbyists who caused this recent change, it was a knee-jerk reaction to a mentally disturbed teenager who allegedly planned a school shooting. That fear meant that even many conservative voters supported the legal changes, as demonstrated by the conservative governor’s signing of the law. The protests against it appeared to be attended to the most extreme right wing anti-government people, and were extremely small demonstrations compared to, say, the marchers wearing pink pussy hats during the previous years (who also weren’t largely NY retirees).

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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highdesert wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:44 am Burlington is a progressive city and also a college town, home of the University of Vermont dubbed a "public Ivy" and it probably attracts a lot of out of state students. Everytown touts the new Vermont gun laws as does MOMs, two Bloomie funded anti-gun groups headquartered in New York City. I'd find it hard to believe that their chapters weren't out there lobbying your state legislature on the gun control bills. Urban vs rural have different views on firearms all across the US, same in my state.

https://www.everytown.org/state/vermont/
Bloomie’s prints are all over pretty much every piece of gun legislation. Follow the money.
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Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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Northern wrote:It isn’t an influx of NY retirees and a horde of Everytown lobbyists who caused this recent change, it was a knee-jerk reaction to a mentally disturbed teenager who allegedly planned a school shooting. That fear meant that even many conservative voters supported the legal changes, as demonstrated by the conservative governor’s signing of the law. The protests against it appeared to be attended to the most extreme right wing anti-government people, and were extremely small demonstrations compared to, say, the marchers wearing pink pussy hats during the previous years (who also weren’t largely NY retirees).
This sounds accurate. The calls for firearm prohibition come from Burlington, even if Bloomberg money is unleashed as part of the campaign to make more prohibitions happen.

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Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of

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DispositionMatrix wrote: Tue Oct 26, 2021 11:20 pm
Northern wrote:It isn’t an influx of NY retirees and a horde of Everytown lobbyists who caused this recent change, it was a knee-jerk reaction to a mentally disturbed teenager who allegedly planned a school shooting. That fear meant that even many conservative voters supported the legal changes, as demonstrated by the conservative governor’s signing of the law. The protests against it appeared to be attended to the most extreme right wing anti-government people, and were extremely small demonstrations compared to, say, the marchers wearing pink pussy hats during the previous years (who also weren’t largely NY retirees).
This sounds accurate. The calls for firearm prohibition come from Burlington, even if Bloomberg money is unleashed as part of the campaign to make more prohibitions happen.
The key in my mind is who is funding these movements, bloomie.
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"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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I get it that Bloomberg throws money wherever gun prohibitions are being proposed, but I think those of you from bigger states misapprehend how that works in Vermont. This isn’t a case of lobbying for something that needed lobbying in the situation in order to happen. The laws we are talking about could have passed even if all the Bloomberg money had been thrown to the opposite side. It’s not about the money in this particular case, it’s about a very clear cultural divide and a total lack of knowledge/experience within the culture that was in the clear majority on this issue. The way out of this is perhaps already happening as most new gun owners here over the last two years came from the left. By changing the face of gun ownership and Participation in shooting (the first indoor range recently opened and is a very welcoming place), it will prove more difficult
To continue to pass restrictive gun laws.

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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I don’t pretend to know the nuances of states other than Texas. I do know the asshole bloomie had every one of the major democrats running for office in Texas in his pocket. He’s at the root of all gun restrictions regardless. He emboldens and gives these movements prominence and a national flavor. If as you say these restrictions would have passed anyway, y’all dropped the ball. Root cause should have been y’all’s mantra and not restrictions, a state that had no restrictions on a civil right, a bill of rights amendment, let these do nothing laws become law. Where did the idea spring from for the need for restrictions, they came from somewhere. I seriously doubt they were fully home grown and claiming a knee jerk reaction is too simplistic. We don’t live on islands or in a vacuum. Ideas travel.
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"Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" Loquacious of many. Texas Chapter Chief Cat Herder.

Re: Everytown media coaching touts closure of "open carry loophole" in Vermont

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Sik, take a moment to reflect that in the same breath as accusing my analysis of what happened here to be “too simplistic,” you are simply forwarding a rubber stamped, one size fits all approach. Everyone who has carefully looked at what happened here can plainly see that the regs passed as, quite simply, a knee jerk reaction of both Democrats as well as Republicans to a very specific situation that arose. Otherwise, gun regs have been an area that politicians have been wise to stay clear of (Bernie only recently took up a position, having for decades garnered votes even from conservative voters here in part because he left guns alone).

I take the premise of our organization to be that being “liberal” is not inconsistent with wanting open access to firearms without unreasonable restrictions, and to address root social/economic causes in a manner that reduces the incidents and conditions that many other liberals simply attribute to guns. To that end, I think it’s worth looking in detail at what actually happened here, what people’s attitudes are here, and seeing how widespread gun ownership and relative lack of restrictions thrive in what is arguably one of the most liberal states in the country.

Root causes ARE being addressed here, in spades, it’s just that the politicians and many liberal voters don’t seem yet to make a direct connection that root cause mitigation addresses issues that some of them still want to resolve with firearms restrictions. But there are reasons why we have low enough violence and other crime that as DM said, for well over 200 years we’ve not pushed an agenda of restricting firearms. I challenge you to identify any US state that has so little regulation of guns alongside the kinds of social and economic programs that get widespread support here. “Dropped the ball” indeed.

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