The day after a 19-year-old gunman killed 17 students at a Florida high school, Gov. Phil Scott defended Vermont’s permissive gun laws and rejected calls for new restrictions.
“We’re fortunate we’re one of the safest states in the country, and I believe our gun laws are balanced,” the first-term Republican said Thursday afternoon. “They balance public safety with our rights.”
Rather than limiting access to firearms, Scott said the state should focus on providing more training and drills in schools so that staff and students can prepare for active-shooter situations.
“We should do more [training], and certainly we should be vigilant at this point in time,” Scott said, citing concerns about “copycat” shootings in the wake of the Florida massacre.
Sen. Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden), an outspoken gun control proponent, saw it differently. He said the latest incident should “increase the shame” on the Vermont Senate, which he criticized for failing to address gun violence.
“We are doing jack shit about a problem that’s every bit as pressing nationwide as the opioid epidemic,” Baruth said Thursday. “And the reason I say that is not to denigrate what’s happening with the opioid epidemic — people are dying — but the mass-shooting epidemic that we’re experiencing is decaying American life at its foundation.”
Five years ago, after a gunman killed 26 people at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, Baruth introduced legislation banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition. Under pressure from fellow senators, he quickly withdrew the bill.
In 2015, the Senate considered legislation that would require anyone purchasing a gun in Vermont to undergo a federal criminal background check. Current law mandates such checks only when the seller is a federally licensed firearm dealer.
That bill failed on a 3-2 vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, with Sens. Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) and Jeanette White (D-Windham) supporting it and Sens. Dick Sears (D-Bennington), Alice Nitka (D-Windsor) and Joe Benning (R-Caledonia) opposing it.
Baruth made a new push for universal background checks last year. But because the panel still consists of the same five members, he argued, “one senator in that committee is making the decision for the entire Senate” as to whether his bill reaches the floor for debate.
“What I’ve been trying to say since the beginning of this session is that that’s not allowable anymore,” Baruth said. “We’ve reached a point where we have to demand that the Senate function as the deliberative body it’s supposed to be.”
Attorney General T.J. Donovan said Thursday that he supports Baruth’s proposal.
“I understand the culture of sportsmen and women. I fully support it,” the Democratic AG said. “They are responsible gun owners, but when somebody … is a threat to our public safety, they have forfeited their right to own and to possess a firearm, in my opinion.”
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) responded to the Florida shooting by condemning inaction by Congress.
“It was yet another awful and sobering event,” she said. “At some point Congress decided that it was okay for children to die.”
Johnson noted that the Vermont House passed a bill last year that would allow police to confiscate guns when they make an arrest for domestic violence. That legislation is also stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sears, who chairs the panel, has refused to advance the House bill, citing constitutional concerns.
Sears said Thursday that Florida’s school shooting would not change his approach to gun legislation. He introduced a bill this year that would create a court process allowing police to take guns away from those deemed to be an “extreme risk” to themselves or others. He said that such a policy might prevent situations similar to this week’s mass shooting, “assuming that somebody came forward and said to police, you know, this person is dangerous right now and has shown these pictures on Facebook, has indicated threats.”
Gov. Scott said Thursday that he had not spoken with Sears about the bill, but he indicated that he would keep an open mind if it passed the legislature.
“We’ll make sure that we have all voices heard on that,” the governor said. “I agree with the premise that someone that has a mental illness should be prevented from obtaining a firearm.”
But Scott said his mind was made up about Baruth’s universal background check bill. He noted that early reports suggest the Florida shooter passed a background check in order to obtain the weapon he used in the shooting.
“So that doesn’t always prevent these types of situations, unfortunately,” Scott said.
Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. Find our conflict-of-interest policy here: sevendaysvt.com/disclosure.
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The Governor say we need more shooting drills in schools?
The kids in Florida had so many drills, they thought the actual shooting was a drill.
I am curious; how much money has the NRA given to the Governor and his campaign?
“Were fortunate were one of the safest states in the country, and I believe our gun laws are balanced,” the first-term Republican said Thursday afternoon. “They balance public safety with our rights.”
I agree with Scott and Sears.
If you want to do something useful, build more mental health facilities. If you’re not willing to pay for that, install metal detectors at all schools and hire full time security. Schools are by law designated as gun free zones which make them targets for crazy people intent on getting their “day in the spotlight”. It’s not rocket science people.
Why can’t we learn from other countries which have already solved this problem, such as Australia, Japan, Great Britain? There are solutions that work, and there are some very fishy reasons why Americans resist adopting those solutions. As always, wonder where the money trail leads – – who benefits from selling more and more guns?
Aside from that, we need to address the factors that cause anyone to feel the urge to go out and murder as many people as possible. Not only mental health in general, but the outcomes of childhood neglect and abandonment, and the causes and outcomes of inadequate parenting skills need to be examined and addressed. The effects of video games that reward killing and the endless hours of watching mind-numbing violence on TV and in movies are no doubt contributing factors. The focus on mobile phones, which isolates parents from interacting with their children, and then teaches the children to isolate from other human beings, these are contributing, too. The current administration’s active support of hate groups and violence toward minorities has also unleashed many killer demons.
There are probably many more cultural factors that increase the insanity that is the compulsion to go out and kill. We need to stop playing soccer with these issues, and instead get focused, study up on root causes, do some outside-the-box problem-solving, and implement some serious cultural change. This isn’t a simple problem and there isn’t a simple solution.
Rights that are limited are no longer rights they are by definition, privileges.
It has long been said that gun control has nothing to do with guns and everything to do with control. That theory is 100% spot on.
The segregation of firearms owners is not a new thing. The first arms control laws in North America started in the late 1600s to ensure that enslaved people could not rise against the governing populous.
Each and every gun control law passed in the United States since its creation has been based on trying to control a given subset of the population. First by race, then by nationality, religion, creed and any other reason the majority population could think of to segregate a minority.
Native Americans were disarmed for their own protection. Stripped of their homes, property and slaughtered by the governing majority. New Yorks Sullivan Act was passed to keep the Irish immigrants from protecting themselves from the Tammany hall regime that ruled the city. Jim Crow laws made citizens prove just cause to carry arms. The Just cause definition being that you were not a person of color. Martin Luther King Jr was denied a pistol permit because he had no just cause. Think about that for a minute. The Mulhurn act in California was directly enacted when the black citizens of LA protected themselves from corrupt law enforcement. The gun control act of 1968 followed the civil rights riots in Watts. The Brady act and 1994 AWB followed the riots after the officers of the LAPD were exonerated from assaulting Rodney King.
There is a long and rich gun control history in the United States. Every single piece of that history is based in bigotry, bias, hate, control and segregation.
Gun control is a racist act. Period.
I cannot imagine waking up today – the day after a mass shooting – and thinking, “ah, now i need to defend guns on the internet.”
Truly shameless.
Applestoapples.
Your statements are pitiful. An absolute demonstration that you have no understanding of the constitution AT ALL.
The constitution does not “allow” us anything. It is a guarantee, a statement of our claim to our god given birthrights and a restriction on the government “We The People” allow to exist.
“So that doesn’t always prevent these types of situations, unfortunately,” Scott said.
Nothing is a 100% guarantee but something that even reduces people from bringing guns into schools and shooting at children by 25% seems like a good idea to me.
Scott has no idea what the constitution does or does not allow. Gun rights, as with most rights (see free speech) are not unlimited, despite popular opinion. Congress can and should way public safety concerns against the individuals right to own a gun. This should not be a partisan bloodbath. Instead, reasonable people should agree to discuss how to limit shooting deaths.
Wow Paul! The bodies aren’t even cold yet.. This may be a new record for you.
Senator Baruth. You compare the opiod epidemic (Contrived by the pharma companies making a killing on it), to the gun problem? The opiods have been 100% illegal and fully banned for decades. How is that working out? Good solution, problem solved?
Phil Scott’s quote “So that doesn’t always prevent these types of situations, unfortunately,” is the type of reckless and thoughtless thinking that prohibits this country from moving forward. If a universal background check could prevent just one mass shooting or save one life, would that not be worth it to the citizens that Governor Scott serves? One life should be worth more than the cost and relatively minor inconvenience that a potential gun buyer and seller need to go through with a background check. Does the governor have our best interests at heart?
Sears is a bully and needed to be voted out years ago.