I come to supporting robust federal gun control late.

[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January, the New Hampshire Senate Judiciary Committee held an open hearing to consider SB 116, a bill that would have repealed licensing requirements for carrying a concealed handgun and enshrined into law a principle that has come to be known by gun advocates as “constitutional carry.”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/

[pipoman]

1. The framework for limitation of the government and on the

2nd amendment have been solidified in court decisions mostly since 1939. By definition the Bill of Rights limits governments ability to restrict those things specifically enumerated. So, when you say, "robust federal gun control", there are very few areas left for federal restrictions within the limitations already established.

[gratuitous]

2. When intelligent people gather more data

They often modify their views. That's why they're intelligent.

Considering how foolish far too many people are in their ownership of firearms, reasonable regulation isn't just a good idea, it's societal malpractice not to have a uniform code by which all firearms owners must abide. For example, a person who is so negligent in his handling and storage of his firearms that he is caught at an airport screening with a gun in his luggage loses his right to keep and bear arms. The debate should be on whether that right is forfeit temporarily or permanently.

[hack89]

3. So if uniformity is the goal, will my license to carry be valid in all 50 states?

or is federal laws when it suits your view on guns and local laws when it doesn't?

[cali]

4. I don't know. I don't know enough yet. But I will.

When I research something, I do it thoroughly.

All I know is that I'm less concerned with your right to carry than I am about the awful parade of gun deaths and mass murders.

[hack89]

5. You will need gun owner support and you can certainly get it

but not by completely minimizing our concerns or through hypocritical self serving definitions of things like "universal " or "common sense" that serve only to push your agenda. We expect, as equal partners, that our views be respected and that we get as well as give.

[cali]

6. It's my understanding that most gun owners do support

things like closing the gun show loophole.

I have never been anti-gun owners. I am not now. But I'm with Representative Moulton who did 4 tours of Iraq and who walked out, in disgust, of the "moment of silent prayer" in the House, because he's sick of the hypocritical prayers and the lack of action.

[Abouttime]

7. When Hillary is President

She will have the opportunity to appoint at least 2 maybe 3 judges to the Supreme Court. These appointments will change the balance of the court and the 2nd amendment will be reinterpreted as written, it simply gives the right to the states to form militias. Once that is done the government can begin to gather guns and finally bring our society out of the madness the NRA has created.
First I would like to see the NRA declared a terrorist group.

[cali]

8. Despicable as the NRA is, it's absurd to even consider

it being declared a terrorist group by the government. And it should not be.

[jmg257]

9. The 2nd doesn't give a right to anyone. It is meant to secure a right.

The states were already mandated to maintain militias. That was inherited from the Articles, and codified as part of the constitution.
The roles spelled out for those state entities included the people who would make up those militias, so included the right to do so.


The rights of the people are what is secured in the 2nd - very specifically, not the right of a state.


ETA: it has been ruled that the 2nd secures to the citizen the right to arms related to the efficiency of a militia, and more recently to secure to the people the individual right to arms for self-defense and other lawful purpose.

In no way will a USSC declare the intent of the 2nd was to give a right to the states to form a militia; it was to ensure those militias were effective.

[maxsolomon]

10. our militias are shit. ineffective despite being phenomentally well-regulated.

when's the last time you all marched up and down a field all weekend? or went out on patrol to round up some runaway slaves?

the citizen militia is an anachronism, at best a figment of the collective RKBA imagination. it's still there in our laws, but it practice, it no longer exists.

[tritsofme]

11. This sort of authoritarian day dreaming is simply terrifying.

I really hope you are just trying to be provocative.