Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Edward Jaffe, a serial entrepreneur and the founder of a number of technology companies and a Vermont Registered Investment Advisor entity. He has addressed the Vermont House Ways and Means Committee on economic metrics, monetary theory and various economic observations. He lives in Bennington.
Many of the participants in the ill-named “gun-control” debate are urban, cosmopolitan individuals with little exposure to an environment of broad civilian gun ownership or an environment that precludes useful access to police.
Americans who live in rural areas must take on many functions individually – or at most as a village – such as with firefighting – as opposed to city dwellers who (perhaps unwillingly) count on official agencies to provide for virtually all their needs, security and otherwise.
While Vermont has some variation in population density – it has no cities at all. Sorry, but I cannot consider Burlington a “city” – although that may be its legal definition – it has zero tall buildings, subways, stadiums and mega-structural complexes. To someone like myself who grew up in New York City – Burlington is a very small town – and after 15 minutes of driving, you are not there anymore.
Many areas have no village/town police and are covered by the Vermont State Police – or perhaps in certain instances, a county sheriff. The Vermont State Police consists of 327 sworn members, approximately 90 emergency communication dispatchers and civilian support staff – to cover almost 10,000 square miles. Those officers do not work 24/7/365, so only some fraction of that number is out and about, or available. When I was rear-ended on I-91 – near St. Johnsbury – I had cell service, but it took over 45 minutes for state police to arrive. Much of Vermont has no cell service – so forget about the 45 minutes.
As many people in Vermont live, work, drive and walk in the middle of nowhere it is essential that a weapon can be removed from one’s home.
Also worth mentioning is that police are not an agency of defense – but an agency of criminal justice. Even in a city police are likely to arrive after a crime has occurred and are there to handle whatever comes next. (Pizza arrives more quickly.) Police are not bodyguards. If I write an article people find offensive and I get death threats, the local police will not be parking a Crown Vic in my driveway.
A firearm is a MINIMUM weapon. At 58 years old and barely 130 pounds, a knife or bat is of no use to me. We have not made any great advances in non-lethal weapons, and ironically the few we have, such as pepper spray (useful in an urban environment), are illegal in many locations that have strict weapons laws, aka: complete legislated helplessness.
As many people in Vermont live, work, drive and walk in the middle of nowhere it is essential that a weapon can be removed from one’s home. If you store your guns in accordance with your home circumstances and use some common sense you can ignore all the arguments (and fudged data) you hear about how dangerous it is having a gun in your home. Here is the risk of having a gun in my (childfree) home: clinically, zero.
Self-defense – not hunting or target shooting – is the purpose legislators need to keep in mind, not “sporting purpose.”
Furthermore, a violent person without a gun is still plenty dangerous!
Let’s look at Vermont homicides 2007-2010 (Vermont Criminal Information Center): Out of 41 homicides, 18 involved a firearm (three people were killed by bare hands). So in the state with the “lax” gun laws, less than half of the homicides involve guns.
Here in Vermont – again with our “lax” gun laws – we have the LOWEST gun murder rate (population adjusted) in the U.S. – even lower than Hawaii, where there is no regard for the civil rights of gun owners and “official” gun ownership in Hawaii is only 6.7 percent vs. 42 percent here. See the FBI-sourced data laid out clearly below (note last column):
Gun violence in the United States by state
See also: Gun homicide rate down 49 since 1993; public unaware
Data is a big subject (to be tackled in a future essay) and most of what is tossed about as “fact” are either misinformation or disinformation, but a common missing piece – Defensive Gun Use [DGU] — is relevant to a discussion of self-defense here. While I could not find DGU hard data for Vermont in 2007-2010 – one has to resort to looking through news stories – even using such a method, there seem to be a few such events per year, where a Vermont citizen saved their own life using a gun. Here is one of at least two such events in 2013: “Man shot after allegedly attacking ex-girlfriend in Danby“.
As you listen to the gun debate, keep in mind that two neighboring states have passed weapons laws in the past year that are draconian, threaten mandatory prison time for small, unwitting errors, criminalize gun owners, create black markets and undermine self-defense itself. If this debate interests you, please read these laws. Also worth keeping in mind is that mandatory minimum sentencing as a prosecutor’s tool to secure convictions is basically blackmailing people to give up their right to getting a fair trial by jury.
This is the second commentary in a series. The first was here.
There were a lot of comments – and replies by me — the below is pretty much where I left it.
I am astonished that not ONE person wrote in and said: “Gee, EJ, I favor this or that gun control measure — but I do not want to send duck hunters to Dannemora.” Not one peep against draconian, merciless laws.
That says it all …
