PUTNEY — Governor Shumlin, your stance on gun control does not make sense. In fact, it is not even congruent with the way you govern on other important issues facing our state and nation.
On Town Meeting Day, I was very pleased that you came and gave your home town an update on some critical goals of your administration. I have been a supporter and am very pleased with many of the initiatives you have worked on thus far.
I was, however, quite surprised and disappointed at your response to a fellow town member when she spoke to you on the issue of gun control in our state.
Your response - that this is basically a federal issue and that since we cannot change what the federal government is doing, we should not bother to do anything - is rather striking in its direct contradiction to many of the goals you espouse, and it contradicts the philosophy I see you so rightly govern by in other areas.
You have not waited for the federal government to get it right on health care; you went boldly toward a single-payer system in our state!
You have not waited for the federal government to move forward on vitally important climate-change initiatives.
And before you were elected governor, your leadership on the issue of civil unions made it clear that you stood in the fine Vermont tradition of granting all citizens equal rights, regardless of whether the federal government was ready to do so.
If we had subscribed to the idea that we should wait until the federal government is ready, Vermont would not have been the first state in the union to outlaw slavery!
Yes, it would be ideal if Congress were to enact sensible gun control legislation, but as you know, we cannot make the ideal - or the perfect - the enemy of the good.
We have just recently seen that Congress is unable to pass even very modest gun-control reforms that the vast majority of Americans were in favor of. Vermont should be on this issue in the same way that it is on so many other issues facing our nation: It should be boldly leading the way!
Of course, we could have good laws in our state and someone could easily go to another state with more lax laws. That is not the point.
It does not mean we do not make efforts to make it more difficult to acquire semiautomatic weapons here in Vermont: We do what we can, where we can.
If it makes it more difficult for even one person to get an assault weapon and commit a crime, the law will have been worth the fight.
Most of your fellow governors in neighboring New England states have signed stricter gun laws and are hoping that as a result Vermont does not become a haven for those seeking to bring firearms to nearby urban areas. Vermont is the only state that does not bar convicted felons from possessing guns, and according to the Associated Press, the state is sometimes cited by law enforcement officials in metropolitan areas like Boston and New York as a source for guns used in crimes there.
Due to the incongruous nature of your stand on this issue, I cannot help but wonder whether the powerful gun lobby has gotten to you. The only other reason I could see - and this is perhaps more likely - is that you feel fairly confident in gaining or keeping the support of the more-liberal folks in our state but are concerned about your image with more conservative Vermonters who are more likely to be hunters and are concerned that “us liberals” want to take away their hunting guns. Perhaps you want to be able to say to them that you stood with them on this issue.
I hope that neither of these suppositions is true, because as you know, the gun lobby is simply trying their best to confuse citizens and further divide our country by claiming that stricter gun laws will mean the government will take away their handguns and hunting rifles.
I am sure you know that the truth is these weapons that we are talking about are not hunting rifles. In fact, as a comedian pointed out recently, if you need a semiautomatic weapon to go hunting, someone should tell you to choose another sport - obviously you are not good enough at hunting!
I think it is critically important that you clearly tell us, your constituents, why you think it should continue to be legal to purchase a machine gun in Vermont, as well as high-capacity magazines of ammunition and assault weapons.
So far, you have failed to provide any clear rationale for your stance which does not directly contradict the way you govern on other issues.
I am all for the Second Amendment, and I think all citizens should be free to own as many muskets as they want, but obviously the founders in the 18th century were not psychics and did not foresee the type of weapons that we would have today.
I hope you would agree in principle that there are certain weapons that should not be readily available. Or should any citizen be able to purchase a surface-to-air missile launcher such as those used in many guerrilla armies? If not, it is because there is plainly no reasonable scenario for a citizen to use one.
So let us redraw the line, moving it to a more sensible place, so that we begin to curtail the culture of deadly violence plaguing our country.
I am deeply concerned and surprised that you do not see this as a more critical issue. And I dare say that you would not maintain your casual attitude if, God forbid, a firearms-related tragedy were to happen in one of Vermont's schools.
Vermont has some of the most lenient gun laws in the nation. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gives Vermont a whopping 6 out of 100 (!) in regards to Vermont's gun laws. That this does not alarm you after what we have seen over the last number of years in our nation is quite troubling.
Please do not wait until we have a tragedy here in Vermont before becoming a leader on this critical issue.