The new leader of Gun Sense Vermont understands gun violence better than most. When Clai Lasher-Sommers was 13, her abusive stepfather shot her in the back with a high-powered hunting rifle. Forty-seven years later, lead shrapnel is still working its way out of her body, leaving sores on her skin as it surfaces.
Earlier this month, Gun Sense Vermont announced that Lasher-Sommers, 60, will serve as its acting executive director, replacing Ann Braden, the group’s founder and, for the last five years, the driving force behind the state’s only organization devoted to gun control.
This leadership change raises key questions for the nonprofit and its battle to pass gun-safety measures in a state fiercely protective of the right to bear arms. Can Gun Sense Vermont survive Braden’s departure? Will Lasher-Sommers, a longtime activist and farmer who lives in Westmoreland, N.H., be able to revive its faltering quest for universal background checks?
“She is fearless, she is tenacious and she has been working on this issue for her entire life,” said Braden.
Gun Sense Vermont began when Braden, a mother of two and a former middle school teacher, started a petition for universal background checks in 2012, in response to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut that left 26 dead, 20 of them children.
After collecting 12,000 signatures, she delivered the petition in March 2013 to then-governor Peter Shumlin and held a press conference at the Statehouse. Shumlin was not receptive, but Braden, undeterred, began regularly driving from her home in Brattleboro to Montpelier to lobby for background checks and other gun-safety measures.
Licensed firearms dealers are required to perform the checks in Vermont, but buyers can easily purchase guns online, at gun shows or from private individuals without submitting to any scrutiny.
After two years of acrimonious debate, Braden won two modest victories. In 2015, the Vermont legislature voted to mandate that mental health professionals submit information to a federal database of people who are prohibited from purchasing guns because they are at risk of harming themselves or others. Replicating a federal law, state legislators also made it a crime for felons to possess guns, which enabled local police to enforce the prohibition.
Gun Sense Vermont has grown to a 5,000-member organization, but its central goal remains unrealized. A universal background check bill is still “on the wall” in the House, meaning it’s tacked to a wall in the Judiciary Committee conference room and hasn’t yet been taken down for discussion. Legislation on the Senate side hasn’t fared much better. Senate Judiciary Committee members discussed the bill in 2015 but, in a straw poll, voted 3-2 against sending it to the full body for a vote.
As these bills have stalled, so has Gun Sense Vermont. Without a clear path to achieving its raison d’être, the group has been “a bit dormant in the past year,” in the words of board president Elissa Pine of Brattleboro.
Braden, who offered a similar assessment, said she decided to step down because she is preparing to run for office — likely a state Senate seat — and publishing a novel.
Her successor, Lasher-Sommers, has been a fellow at Everytown for Gun Safety, an organization founded by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg after Sandy Hook. She has lobbied for gun-control measures in New Hampshire’s Statehouse and has served on the board of Gun Sense Vermont. Last year, after then-U.S. senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire declined to meet with gun-control advocates, Lasher-Sommers traveled to Washington, D.C., and crashed the lawmaker’s Coffee With Kelly constituent event. She asked Ayotte to hold a town hall meeting on guns in a cordial but unsuccessful attempt to force the issue.
Perhaps Lasher-Sommers’ most powerful asset is her own story.
When Hillary Clinton made a stop in Keene, N.H., while campaigning for president in 2015, Lasher-Sommers was her warm-up act. Wearing a brocaded jacket and holding a microphone, the New Hampshire farmer strode back and forth as she described her own grisly encounter with guns. In a video of the event posted on C-SPAN, members of the audience look stunned.
Lasher-Sommers was born in Bellow Falls but moved across the border to Spofford, N.H. She lived with her mother, brother and a stepfather. The latter, she said, routinely beat and threatened to shoot the other three.
“He would hang me against a wall with a gun against my throat,” she recalled during an interview last week. When Lasher-Sommers returned home from a friend’s house on a snowy afternoon in January 1970, she could tell her mother and stepfather had been drinking. Lasher-Sommers and her brother tried to keep a low profile as they heated Beefaroni for dinner but couldn’t avoid their stepfather’s rage.
She had run to her bedroom and almost closed the door behind her when her stepfather pulled the trigger on his .30-06 rifle, hitting her in the back. If the bullet hadn’t first grazed the door, she believes she would have died.
Lasher-Sommers spent six months recovering at what is now Dartmouth-Hitchcock medical center; after she was released, she cycled through foster homes until she was 17.
Her stepfather was convicted of aggravated assault, according to Lasher-Sommers.
Today, she grows herbs and vegetables at New Dawn Farm in Westmoreland, not far from where she was shot.
What can Vermonters learn about gun violence from her story?
“It happens everywhere,” Lasher-Sommers responded. “We just have to not think that Vermont is an island.”
Having lobbied in New Hampshire, which, like Vermont, has a strong hunting tradition and weak firearms laws, she is no stranger to intransigence toward to new gun regulations.
But the fact that she doesn’t plan on moving to Vermont could become a liability. Lasher-Sommers points out in her defense that she was born in the Green Mountains and lives just 12 miles from Brattleboro.
Still, gun-rights proponents have long characterized the gun debate as liberal hippies versus real Vermonters. Braden, a native of Connecticut, took heat for being an outsider, despite living in Vermont since 2006.
Lasher-Sommer’s state of residence is the first thing Ed Cutler, president of Gun Owners of Vermont, pointed out when asked about her. “If they’re going to claim to be a Vermont organization, their leadership ought to be Vermonters,” he said.
The second thing he had to say about her: “We consider her a professional victim.”
In addition to weathering criticism from the opposition, Lasher-Sommers will have to contend with a reluctant legislature. Even though a 2016 Vermont Public Radio poll found that 89 percent of Vermonters support universal background checks, it remains unlikely that lawmakers will approve the proposal anytime soon.
“I am working as hard as humanly possible to get my universal background checks bill out of the Judiciary Committee,” Sen. Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden) said. “To be frank, the debate is literally being impeded by a 3-2 vote in that committee.”
Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington), who chairs the committee and was among those who voted no, knows Baruth is frustrated. He said he’ll hold hearings on the bill, but as for the 3-2 vote, “I don’t see that changing.”
It’s not clear whether the background check bill would pass in the Senate, but “it has to be pushed forward even if it’s painful and annoying to others,” Baruth maintained.
The proposal’s prospects look even poorer in the House, where cosponsor Rep. Michael Mrowicki (D-Putney) said, “I would certainly like to get a vote on it,” but “it might not be this year.” He doesn’t yet know whether the House Judiciary Committee will even discuss it.
Perhaps recognizing this situation, Lasher-Sommers said her first priority is bringing more structure to Gun Sense Vermont. That effort includes recruiting additional board members and raising money.
Her predecessor supports that focus. “I really want Gun Sense Vermont to be a long-term sustainable force in the state,” Braden said. She believes her departure will help by prompting the organization to build a deeper leadership bench.
Board president Pine is on the same page. During a short interview, she used the word “sustainable” at least five times. “We want to be less dependent on riled-up individuals and have something people could step in and out of that is sustainable.”
But even as the organization turns inward, its sights remain set on the end goal: universal background checks. “The movement is growing,” Lasher-Sommers said. “I think Vermont is gonna get there.”
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2017.
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OK, because YOU got shot, you want to take guns away from everyone else who didn’t do it.
Pound sand.
“Perhaps Lasher-Sommers’ most powerful asset is her own story.”
A lot of us have stories. Go get drunk with Gabby Giffords, go back to New Hampshire with your nonsense, which always has and always will fail here, and leave us ALONE.
And look at the headline.
BACKGROUND CHECKS EXIST IN VERMONT AND EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THIS NATION.
Once again, we see that gun control advocates cannot advance their agenda without half truths and hand wringing.
You may want to do a little fact checking on your “reporting”. Yes, you can buy a firearm online without a background check, however, it MUST be shipped to a licensed dealer, who then HAS to preform a background check before it can be released to the buyer. Also to sell at a gun show, you must have a federal firearms license, law also dictates, that if you have one of those, you MUST perform a background check when selling a firearm. Please stop spreading more lies that uninformed people take to heart as fact.
We do not want you here- take your sad story and go tell it back in New Hampshire where you belong.
Law enforcement has studied this already and collectively oppose an unenforceable law. Yes her story is heartfelt but she has never made an arrest, built a criminal case, criminally prosecuted anyone. Even the ATF in the 90s said it was to late for universal background checks. Fast forward to 2017 with nearly 600 million to 1 billion firearms in circulation and in an age where people can make weapons themselves in 30 minutes from their living room in PJs its proof non proliferation is dead. Focus on being tough on violent criminals. No more plea deals for violent offenders and maybe hire real security experts with ACTUAL experience to help secure soft targets.
Ann, thank you for all your hard work! I am excited for your political run and I am sure many others are equally excited!
Welcome Clai, we are excited to have you!
if the senate judiciary committee can’t vote the bill out this year, don’t worry, we can always find people to elect in your place who can manage to vote it out the following year.
Sen. Dick Sears Jr., Chair, (D), senator6@hotmail.com
Sen. Joe Benning, Vice Chair, (R), beaner77@myfairpoint.net
Sen. Jeanette K. White, (D), jwhite@leg.state.vt.us
Sen. Alice W. Nitka, Clerk, (D), anitka@leg.state.vt.us
Sen. Tim Ashe, (P/D), tashe@leg.state.vt.us
TELL YOUR SENATORS TO DO THEIR JOBS!
GUNS in the hands of average citizens,the thing that made America in the first place. Thank God for them and thank the constitution for allowing me to own a bunch of them. God bless America and our guns.
“Licensed firearms dealers are required to perform the checks in Vermont, but buyers can easily purchase guns online, at gun shows or from private individuals without submitting to any scrutiny.”
What’s infuriating about this line is that Seven Days already knows this is not true. There has been MANY articles on the subject where the publication has been corrected, and criticized, by this rhetoric. Demonstrates their bias on the subject.
And by the way…NOTHING about this is about “gun safety.” Stop using that misleading term. “Gun owner control” is far more accurate.
I think maybe it’s time somebody file charges against Seven Days for their persistent and intentional lying & misrepresentation of the facts. This isn’t journalism, it’s one sided wanton ignorance.
Just another out of stater brought in by an out of state funded bunch of cronies. Stay out of Vermont of you don’t like the way we do things! Firearms ownership and proliferation has kept us the safest State in America consistently. No matter what these liars say, the facts disagree with them!
More out of state interests trying to change Vermont. Stay in New Hampshire.
She FAILED in NH just like she should FAIL in Vermont. This woman is seeking to create MORE victims with her ridiculous law. She should be rightfully shut down.
The problem with Clai Lasher-Sommers is that she doesn’t understand that guns aren’t the danger. The danger is violently abusive people like her stepfather. She flat out admits he routinely beat and threatened them. This is a man who would have brained her with a piece of firewood, or stabbed her in the back with a steak knife even if there wasn’t a gun in the universe. ADD to the fact that they only convicted him of aggravated assault, instead of attempted murder, and you can see that our legal system itself totally failed her.
The guns are NOT the problem!!!
You think is was a gun problem when it was a family problem. where was her mother? Did she do anything to stop the abuse? apparently not. The father could have used a knife or any household implement to harm her.
Yet she intends to force restrictions on all those that lawfully exercise their right. she has zero clue. Stay in VT.
seven days keeps beating this drum,.. half truths and outright lies,.89% of vt.ers support ubcs? well then,. you’d think lawmakers would be in fear of losing reelection,.they don’t,. because that’s 89% of vpr listeners,.. hardly a true sample of real vermont,.. stick to reviewing yuppie beer and overpriced food fads,..seven days is a pathetic excuse for journalism,..totally out of touch outside the burlington liberal enclave,..
I wonder if she knew that the sandy hook murder weapon was bought legally and stolen by her son. What rules would they have changed that would have stopped this mentally ill person who shot his own mom dead.
I was in a snowmobile crash and haven’t had 100% use of my elbow since the crash all those years ago. I lived in Massachusetts at the time.
By Lasher- Sommers “logic”, should I be crusading for the confiscation, limitations on, licensing, training, purchase limits, limits on use on all other snowmobile owners? GSVT focuses their illogical pursuit of gun owners here in Vermont based on exactly the scenario I present. Both scenarios have no place here.
If you go read the story about this woman first you’ll find out she is not a vermonter.
She is being paid by Michael Bloomberg to destroy gun rights in the safest state in the nation although she lives in New Hampshire.
If you look online you can see her story and you will see that she ended up being shot but she had months to get out of a bad situation and chose not to..
There is not a gun law that these people and acted that makes you or I or any schools safer than they currently are.. if you took time to listen to the vote today many senators spoke out about this.
There was a bill that was passed 30 to nothing and then the gun grabbers took it and destroyed it and that was the only Bill that would have provided some security for both the domestically abused and our school children..
I am posting something that was in the Times Argus that will show each and everyone of you whether you are in favor of gun control or opposed to it that none of these laws prevent criminals from obtaining guns..
People that supported these laws only voted for representation that is taking away their security in the Constitution of the United States of America and of the state of Vermont.. these disgusting people that are elected to uphold the Constitution should hang their heads in shame..
There was an article in the Times Argus today where a girl bought three guns for other people… a perfect example that you will never keep guns out of the hands of the criminals