At a town hall meeting in Milton Tuesday evening, Vermont House leaders got plenty of feedback about their efforts to prevent gun violence. Most of those in attendance said they don’t like the political shift in Montpelier that led both the House and Senate to pass gun-control legislation last week.
“It’s a done deal, as far as I can see,” said Lee Morgan, who said the legislature plans to force such measures through without listening to citizen feedback.
Morgan said the bills would get approval from Gov. Phil Scott, who he called “Governor Benedict Arnold” in a reference to the infamous Revolutionary War traitor. Many pro-gun speakers went out of their way to slam Scott for his recent reversal on guns, which the governor has said came about as he read an affidavit related to a recently foiled school shooting plot in Fair Haven.
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) and Minority Leader Don Turner (R-Milton) listened quietly alongside Rep. Ben Joseph (D-North Hero) and Rep. Chris Mattos (R-Milton) on the stage in the Milton High School auditorium as speakers aired their views for an hour and a half.
About 50 people attended the meeting, including a small group of Milton High School students who opted to attend the town hall instead of a basketball game, the sounds of which echoed from down the hall.
The speakers, most of whom were middle-aged men, outlined a wide range of societal problems other than guns that have led to the recent surge in mass shootings. They also offered solutions for school safety to the politicians, who, the speakers said, are already in the process of betraying the public.
“I want to say shame on Governor Scott,” said Ed Gallo, of Richmond. He suggested Scott’s stance doesn’t honor Vermonters’ right to defend themselves with guns.
“It’s kind of convenient because he’s got an armed body guard that walks around with him,” Gallo said.
Gallo recalled growing up in Vermont, when kids would bring their deer rifles to school. He said the vice principal used to go out in the parking lot to admire students’ guns. It wasn’t seen as a danger, Gallo said, insisting that legislation controlling access to guns will not make students safer.
“I want to say shame on the Vermont legislature,” he said. “Shame on you.”
Lee Morgan’s nephew, Michael, acknowledged that an extremely small portion of the population uses guns “in a demonic nature to kill fellow humans needlessly.” The sudden focus on guns, he said, is a result of media “whipping the American populace into a frenzy about these ‘evil guns.’”
The younger Morgan was the first of many speakers to describe places of learning in military terms.
“Schools have been identified as soft targets by these abhorrent individuals,” he said, suggesting that placing armed guards at schools would “put these thugs on notice that our schools are no longer easy targets.”
Morgan said the focus on controlling guns is misguided, and the schools need to be “hardened,” or fortified, to protect against would-be shooters.
“If guns kill people, why send people with guns to war?” he said. “Why not send just the guns?” Much of the crowd erupted in applause.
The roughly half-dozen Milton High School students at the meeting didn’t applaud. They sat silently for most of the town hall as they listened to the speakers. Near the end, some of them got a turn with the microphone.
“Guns in school don’t make me feel safe,” said Ari Randall, a Milton High School student who doesn’t believe a “good guy with a gun” will stop a shooter.
“No one is that powerful and more people dying isn’t going to solve our problems,” Randall said.
Caitlyn Lamotte, a senior at the high school, said she respects the right to own guns for hunting but wants lawmakers to limit access to weapons capable of — and designed for — killing and maiming many people in a short time.
“That’s not fair to me,” she said, gesturing to the wider audience, “that because you guys want an AR-15, I’ve gotta die?”
Lamotte then turned to the lawmakers on stage.
“Please. I beg you,” she said. “This shouldn’t even be a question. I want to live.”
Milton superintendent Ann Bradshaw spoke up after the students. She responded to suggestions from other speakers that lawmakers help “harden” the schools with armed guards and other security measures.
“Yes, we could harden our schools,” she said, “But I just wonder, as I visualize Sandy Hook and the first graders in the corner, and the shooter walked in with an automatic rifle and just slaughtered them like lambs—”
She stopped suddenly because a man in the crowd shouted to correct her that the gun used to kill 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School was, in fact, semiautomatic. Bradshaw skipped to her point: “You have the right to bear arms, yes, but do people need automatic and semiautomatic weapons?”
On stage, the four representatives made a point to do more listening than talking. They refused when pressed by a member of the audience to say how they plan to vote on various gun legislation as it faces approval in the coming weeks.
“We’re not going to talk about that,” Turner said. “I want to thank you for coming. I’ve been a representative for 13 years here, and I regret that I’ve never done this before because it was enlightening.”
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A_Trout… why is it you refuse to show everyone who you are
Are you really that embarrassed by you’re comments?
I asked you previously to drop the pseudo name so we know who we are talking to.
Whatever excuses you make we know the problem is drugs and what it is doing to our teenagers because of their easy access to it now and it will be even easier after marijuana legalization takes place
We know and their formative years it destroys their minds and it leads to many of the things that are taking place in America today because of drugs
We can say it is guns or knives or cars or anything we want to point the finger at but it is obvious you will never own up to the truth.
Will Waizenegger, is there some semi-automatic knife that I’m not aware of? One that can stab 1200 times in 5 minutes from multiple stories up (the Vegas shooter)? One that can unleash its twisting, tumbling action without pausing to reload? Quit throwing up smoke screens and deal with the issue at hand. Easy access to weapons of war is indefensible. The Supreme Court refused to hear a case on CT’s ban on assault rifles, meaning it’s constitutional. The Supreme Court refused to hear a challenge to CA’s 10-day waiting period.. It’s constitutional. The days of common sense gun safety are coming. Be part of the solution.
I keep wondering what the narrative will be when…God forbid…another mass killing takes place again, only this time with a knife taken from the family kitchen to slash up a classroom. Or the mowing down of a playground by a car taken from the family garage. Or the use of a pipe bomb from instructions taken off YouTube. Will they still blame us lawful Vermont gun owners?
Putting this much time, effort and state resources into gun owner control is naive, to put it nicely. I wonder how many REAL AND IMPORTANT problems have not been solved this legislative session because of this wasteful attempt to legislatively control over 70% of the state’s citizenry.
Free and legislatively liberal gun ownership in this state is part of the culture and going back on a promise of no new gun owner control laws to the Vermont gun owner is no small thing. The governor looked into a lot of eyes and shook a lot of hands while running when he made that promise. Mine was one of those hands he shook.
So, if he is able to so easily go back on his word on that, I wonder how easily it will be for him to go back on his word on other important things. At this point, without the credibility of his promises, he might as well be a lame duck governor.
And going back on his word will probably be his legacy, I’m afraid.
Rep. Turner says it all when he said that he has been a rep. For 13 years and this was the first time he had attended a town meeting and listened. Thanks Rep. Turner for finally telling the truth that you have done nothing for 13 years. Its the job of reps to listen to their constituents and act on those ideas to get things done. Its time to start the republic over with new leaders that understand what their jobs are.
Nothing proposed is going to make the public safer. The kid in Fair haven passed a background check. The FL killer passed a background check. The background check bill is a distraction. The kid in Fair Haven is likely to beat the charges and be roaming free again. He will also still pass a background check if so. The state needs to bring back the state hospital and use it with people like this.
Richard Ley continues to throw up smoke screens. It’s the drugs. It’s texting. It’s good gun owners. Etc, etc. etc. Everything but the weapon at hand. They aren’t going into schools, churches and nightclubs with blow darts and rubber band guns, Mr. Ley. They choose ARs and semi-automatics for a reason, and that’s rapid death. Stop defending easy access to weapons of war.
Ed Gamut, the Secret Service, all those good guys with a good, couldn’t stop Hinkley from shooting Reagan. The element of surprise is never in favor of the defender. Keep weapons of war out of the hands of the citizenry.
If anyone that was really interested in this debate took the time to check the fax they would see that these semi-automatic rifles that they would like to call weapons of war are no such thing
It is also a fact that these rifles kill less people then teens who are texting and driving and possibly under the influence of marijuana.
Are these the same legislators that just legalized marijuana that will increase the break-ins into homes by teens who will steal guns and whatever is available to have money to go buy more marijuana putting more guns on the street in the hands of criminals..
I am saddened that these lawmakers have no common sense approach to anything and have not thought out the whole process that they have instituted that will only lead to more crime in America
It is time to get drugs out of our schools and off our streets..
No I am not saying we need to pass another law because we have passed how many laws that have not stopped the drug problem we have that is so extreme in Vermont
The common sense approach is to take the steps where they are needed and that is not by adding more gun laws or taking guns away from the hard-working law-abiding tax-paying gun owners in the safest state in the nation
The good gun owners of Vermont have offered many resolutions that offer a common sense approach to ending the violence in our schools but the gun grab lawmakers with the help of Michael Bloomberg don’t want to hear them it does not fit in with their agenda
Good for the high school students. Shame on those who laugh and cheer about the idiotic ‘send guns to war’ trope. Those folks love their access to ARs and weapons of war more than they love their children.
She wants to flat out ban *semiautomatic* weapons?? Probably not. Many of these politicians aren’t connecting with voters because they’re putting no effort into actually understanding wtf they’re talking about