BURLINGTON — The City Council approved three citywide gun control resolutions for placement on the March ballot, but shot down one requiring a concealed firearm permit on city grounds.
At Monday night’s council meeting, the public voiced their side of Burlington’s debate on gun control policy for an hour and a half, one side wearing blaze orange hunting colors and the other side wearing green shirts representing Gun Sense Vermont, an arms-control group.
The three gun control resolutions approved by the council include:
• allowing police to confiscate firearms, ammunition and other weapons from those suspected of committing acts of domestic violence;
• requiring that firearms are kept locked and stored in homes;
• banning firearms from establishments serving alcohol (expect the owner and law enforcement personnel).
The resolutions will go on the March 2014 ballot. If any of the resolutions are approved by voters, the Legislature would decide whether to grant a charter change, which is required by Vermont statute for municipalities to set their own gun-related policy.
According to an informal tally taken during the meeting, Burlington residents spoke in favor of gun control, 14-11. Nonresidents of the city spoke against gun-control resolutions, 13-1.
Before the vote, Mayor Miro Weinberger said he does not support requiring a permit for a concealed firearm (the failed resolution), because it would be costly and difficult to enforce, referencing his conversation with Burlington Police Chief Michael Schirling.
Also, Weinberger said it would create a “patchwork of local regulation,” and would likely fail in the Legislature.
The council joined the mayor in opposing the concealed firearm permit resolution. Councilors supporting the proposal were Max Tracy, P-Ward 2, Vince Brennan, P-Ward 3, Rachel Siegel, P-Ward 3, and Norman Blais, D-Ward 6.
Gov. Peter Shumlin has long opposed gun control proposals, except for policy that would make it easier for police to seize guns from domestic violence abusers.
Weinberger has not spoken with Shumlin about his support for the ordinances, he said.
Weinberger also opposed a ban on assault weapons, which failed to pass the Charter Change Committee assigned to draft the five original gun control resolutions.
Opponents of gun control policy, including Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs President Clint Gray, voiced concerns with municipal gun policy, citing the failure of the resolutions to address mental health and drug-related violence and the domino-effect of municipal gun control policy interfering with law enforcement’s understanding of fractured gun control laws around the state, among other concerns.
Elizabeth Mason, who came to represent the Vermont branch of 1 Million Moms Against Gun Control, a gun-support group from Baltimore, raised a banner outside City Hall before the council meeting opposing all the resolutions on the table before the council.
Before the meeting, Mason said the proposed resolutions would leave women defenseless against sexual offenders.
“Disarming women in Burlington would make it a free-for-all for offenders,” she said.
She said gun reform should focus on increasing enforcement and punishment of current policy regulating gun use.
Supporters of municipal gun control policy referenced a school shooting in Nevada on Monday that killed a teacher and seriously injured two children as an example of the threat to children’s safety, and offered accounts of incidents in which friends or family members were killed by intoxicated arms-bearers.
Blais, who voted for each resolution and sits on the Charter Change Committee, responded to many of the issues raised by opponents during the meeting.
He said Burlington has the authority to set its own gun control policy, that it is constitutional for a municipality to reasonably regulate the rights of residents in certain circumstances and that Burlington should pave the way on gun control policy reform, strongly disagreeing technically and morally with opponents.
“That is not a fear, in my perspective, that is a hope,” he said, referencing the possible trend toward gun reform across Vermont municipalities. “I hope that Burlington takes the lead in passing measures that will make our cities safe.”
Siegel, who also supported all the resolutions and serves on the Charter Change Committee, responded to the opponents’ concern that gun control policy is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.
“I heard and recognized that a lot of people feel really threatened by the proposed charter changes, I hear people expressing a lot of fear of losing rights,” she said. “I guess we just disagree, to some degree, on what it means to persecute.”
