Updated at 6:06 p.m.
The National Association for Gun Rights mailed postcards to Vermonters this week attacking Republican Gov. Phil Scott for embracing new gun control proposals. The Colorado-based group urged recipients to call the governor and ask him to veto S.55, a gun control bill that passed the Vermont Senate earlier this month.
The postcards feature a doctored photo of a childlike Scott sitting on the shoulders of former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, who stands beside Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) — both outspoken advocates of new guns laws.
“Is Vermont Governor Phil Scott Feinstein & Bloomberg’s gun control lovechild?” it reads.
A lifelong proponent of gun rights, Scott changed course last month and embraced certain gun-control proposals following a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and a foiled plot closer to home, in Fair Haven. But according to his spokeswoman, Rebecca Kelley, the NAGR postcard distorts the governor’s views.
“It’s this type of misleading propaganda that’s so destructive to the work being done to better protect our kids and communities, and the governor will continue to exhibit bold leadership that keeps our kids safe without infringing on constitutional rights,” she said in a written statement.
Kelley noted that NAGR mischaracterizes the scope of S.55. The postcard suggests the legislation “could include” new “‘gun confiscation orders’ letting officials seize your firearms without due process” and “a ban on virtually all private firearm sales and purchases.” Vermont lawmakers have proposed no such thing.
It also raises the specter that provisions already abandoned by a House committee — such as a 10-day waiting period for firearm purchases and a ban on sales of “semi-automatic” firearms — could become law.
S.55, as passed by the Senate, raises the firearm purchase age to 21 and requires background checks before private gun sales. The House was debating those measures Friday afternoon — as well as ones that would ban the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines and so-called bump stocks.
Clai Lasher-Sommers, executive director of the gun-control group Gun Sense Vermont, called the postcard “awful.”
“It’s very divisive, and it causes people to stop having a democratic conversation,” she said. “I don’t like it.”
NAGR may also be running afoul of Vermont’s lobbying statutes.
According to Will Senning, director of elections and campaign finance in the Secretary of State’s Office, “there is little doubt” that the postcards constitute lobbying because “they are soliciting others to communicate with legislators or administrative officials to influence legislation.” But NAGR has not registered as a Vermont lobbyist employer, a step that is required within 48 hours of spending $500 or more on such activities.
Organizations are also required to file expenditure reports within 48 hours of spending $1,000 or more on advertising designed to “influence legislative action.” NAGR had not done so as of Friday evening.
The group did not respond to a request for comment.
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You can smell the panic in the air.
How is the truth divisive? Democratic conversation? Referendum, these are my constitutional rights your messing with.
James Boudreau, it’s Phil “flip-flop” Scott… says one thing does the opposite .. Makes promises, get’s in office and flip-flops to the liberal democrats. He can’t figure out if he’s a democrat or republican… Rebecca Kelley is full of bull.. if this gun control passes next it will be “‘gun confiscation orders’ letting officials seize your firearms without due process” and “a ban on virtually all private firearm sales and purchases.” only time till Vermont lawmakers will propose that too.
The National Association for Gun Rights sounds like an astro-turf group funded by fascist Right Wing billionaire Robert Mercer.
There is no end to Right Wing derangement.
Looks like the gun nut crowd is running out of tin foil for their hats. The paranoia surrounding this issue is evident in most every anti-Scott, anti-gun legislation screed from the people claiming Da Gub-mint is coming to swipe your rights. It is such bullshit, the product of gullible minds listening to NRA manipulation. Try reading the bill and understand what it is trying to balance. Critical thinking skills would really benefit this crowd, as well as a review of what the 2nd amendment actually says.
S.55 gives me hope for the future of Vermont. Thank you to all the hard working legislators who have worked hard to craft a decent bill and thank you to everyone who raised their voice to demand Vermont update it’s gun laws!
As to the argument that the 2nd Amendment can’t be restricted. Every other right under the constitution can be restricted as long as it meets the proper test as laid out by the Supreme Court (general examples are: strict scrutiny, intermediary scrutiny, and rational basis).
The government can restrict free speech if it meets the strict scrutiny test. The government can discriminate based on gender if it meets intermediate scrutiny. Why would gun rights be any different?
‘Feinstein & Bloomberg’? Dog whistle anyone .
RHINO or true Vermonter? Will Scott do the right thing and support real Vermonters? Or will he support the paranoid tlefty trust fund babies..
Sorry, but you don’t get to decide that only people who oppose any and all gun control measures are “true Vermonters.” Scott grew up here and is as “true” a Vermonter as there is. The issue of whether we put restrictions on the ownership of crowd-killing-machines does not split down the line of so-called Vermonters v. non-Vermonters. Plenty of native-born Vermonters support gun control, and plenty of people in the paranoid 2d Amendment “anti-gubmin” crowd were not born here.
Phil “One Term” Scott is committing political suicide. Pun intended. He should go back to racing cars in circles because it’s his forte.
I get what Kelley is saying to an extent, but make no mistake about it, Phil Scott pulling a 180 on gun control is divisive and does shut down democratic conversation. Bill S.55 does contain measures to make standard capacity magazines illegal. Bill S.55 does contain measures that as currently written would make private gun sales economically nonviable. If universal back ground checks were free, and convenient to do, that would change the effect of private gun sales, but as written the economic effect is to either make it so that you might as well buy a brand new gun, or you are a criminal. Yes what is written in that post card is fear mongering, but everything on that card has been proposed, or is being proposed, and Scott’s current stance is that anything is on the table. Look I wrote Phil Scott, and I don’t agree with him. He feels that he is trying to protect kids, I can respect that, but this doesn’t protect kids. The current law is no guns at school, no guns in courtrooms, why are lawyers safe and kids aren’t? It is because we enforce that law in the courtroom, and we don’t in school. Why pass more unenforceable laws when we choose not to enforce the laws that we already have? All I am asking is that we stop fetishizing guns, (which is what democrats tend to do, they have a fetish to ban guns, and don’t care about kids), and take our kids safety in the classroom as seriously as we take our lawyers safety in the courtroom. Is it so much to ask to put kids before lawyers or guns? I know, never mind the kids, screw the kids, just ban guns, is the current attitude anyway…
Mctommy, I have read bill S.55, and with the modifications that were made, standard magazines are banned. If I buy a Ruger SR-762 for deer hunting, and it is a good deer rifle, it will come from the factory with three 20 round magazines. These standard magazines are now illegal. They make 5 round magazines for deer hunting, but I can’t get them from Ruger, Ruger doesn’t sell the gun with anything but 20 round magazines. The bill restricts to 10 rounds, which isn’t that common. The bill also proposes universal background checks, but the devils in the details. These background checks can currently only be run on the federal level by licensed fire arms dealers. Many of these dealers aren’t interested in taking on this liability for people, and the remaining people are talking about charging enough that you might as well just buy a brand new gun from the dealer. If you want universal background checks, make it free and convenient, which could easily be done online at the state level, if they choose too. Lastly, I have read the 2nd amendment, it doesn’t appear to restrict what type of gun you bear, but everyone seems to have a different interpretation of the words. Those words were written over 200 years ago, and if you wanted to buy a cannon, a mortar, a grenade, a bomb, a shot gun, a rifle, a repeater, or any other weapon of choice, you could if you had the cash.
I do like how reader points out that the government can, and has restricted all sorts of rights. Even the sacred 1st and 2nd amendment have been restricted by our government. In case you weren’t paying attention, the government doesn’t care about its people, it cares about order, and control-ability. Australia had a mandatory recall, it was easier to do because they had a bill of rights, but it can be done here too. Assault weapons have basically been illegal since 1986 in the USA. You can say that the democrats “dont want to take guns away”, but even this bill “takes new magazines over 10 rounds away”. So I would say this is more open to interpretation than reality, and depending on how you interpret it, they do want to take guns away, just slowly. Think of it like the frog that falls in the milk, if he kicks long enough, he has butter, and walks out, but this happens so slowly that no one realized the frog was making butter.
knowyourassumptions just so we know our assumptions, a plow truck in the wrong hands is a crowd killing machine, as is a pressure cooker with a few other kitchen ingredients, or an 1800’s cannon, or even the lowly shot gun with buck shot. In the civil war, buck and ball was a very effective crowd killing machine. In short the hand that wields it is worse than the tool. Should we ban pressure cookers? Have you looked up the death toll from cars in Vermont? Do you know that Europe restricts vehicle access allot more than the USA and consequently has a lower death toll on their roads per capital than the USA too. Should we start to restrict car access more? They do kill allot of people, I myself have lost allot of friends to cars. The Amish don’t lose anyone to cars or guns, should we follow their example? We would save thousands of lives if we followed the Amish way. Are lives not worth a little inconvenience, the Amish think they are. I will give you this, Phil Scott is a Vermonter, but the rural parts and the urban parts are divided on this. The United States is currently as heavily divided as it was when the Civil War broke out, this is the second time in US history we have been this divided as a people. I am asking that we slow down, talk to people of different views, and consider that not everyone has the same lifestyle. The college I went to had guns in most of the dorm rooms, why did we never have any students shot while I was there?
“Its this type of misleading propaganda thats so destructive to the work being done to better protect our kids and communities, and the governor will continue to exhibit bold leadership that keeps our kids safe without infringing on constitutional rights”
If the Governor signs S.55, then he is not protecting kids and communities, and it’s contrary to bold leadership to succumb to the emotional debate. S.55 does nothing to keep our kids safe; it’s nothing more than a knee-jerk, rushed, emotionally driven piece of garbage. I don’t know how it does not infringe on the constitutional rights of a 19 year old who wants to purchase a gun.
“A well regulated Militia”. That’s called the National Guard. You wanna play army, join the army. Time to start taking the guns away from the man child. Amendments are meant to be amended. So let’s do that before another mass shooting. People defending the second amendment seem awfully afraid of teenagers armed with the first.
Those postcards look like something from the mind of Donald Trump. Having an adult do the design instead of a petulant child might go a long way toward helping their cause.