A young man asked, “Cars kill more people than guns. Why don’t we just get rid of cars?”
While Blais and other residents who supported gun restrictions carried the day — voters passed three changes to the city charter by wide margins in 2014, just over a year after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut — that question has nagged at Blais ever since.
Last week, as Burlington’s City Council urged the Legislature to grant the approval that would allow the gun measures to go into effect, Blais found an opportunity to respond to the young man’s comment.
“This is Title 23 of the Vermont statutes,” Blais told the council, holding up a hefty blue leather tome. “It goes on almost 300 pages, over 3,000 statutes. This is our community’s response to the dangers posed by cars.”
The title deals with the ownership, inspection and registration of cars and the behavior expected of people who own and drive them in Vermont.
“No one is suggesting that by having these laws the government is trying to take our cars away from us,” Blais said.
“What we need is a comparable approach to guns,” he added.
Blais was preaching to the choir. A council resolution calling for legislative action passed unanimously.
The Burlington measures would allow police to confiscate firearms, ammunition and other weapons from people suspected of domestic violence; require that firearms be kept locked and stored in homes; and ban firearms from establishments serving alcohol.
But the proposals have stalled in the Statehouse because of gun control politics.
Changes to municipal charters require approval by the Legislature and the signature of the governor. Lawmakers did not take up the city’s gun-related charter changes in 2014. Last year, the proposals were shot down in the House Government Operations Committee, where all charter changes must first be heard.
Many observers said the Burlington measures were shelved because the Legislature was already involved in a bruising debate over gun legislation that resulted in new restrictions on gun ownership.
Vermont’s gun laws are among the most lenient in the nation, and sportsmen have heavily lobbied the Legislature to protect gun rights. The law that was enacted last year narrowly focuses on keeping guns away from the mentally ill and allowing local law enforcement to prosecute firearms cases the feds turn down. A provision that would have required universal background checks for gun purchases proved too controversial and was stripped from the bill.
The legislative debate drew one of the largest turnouts for a public hearing in recent Statehouse history and was contentious. After that, lawmakers and advocates on both sides of the issue had little enthusiasm to do battle over Burlington’s charter changes.
“Burlingtonians are serious about this,” Weinberger said during a visit to the Statehouse last week. “We’ve seen violence on the streets of Burlington in recent weeks that could have been impacted by one of these charter changes. These are legitimate public safety issues.”
He was referring to a deadly shooting on Church Street last month where the suspect apparently had a gun with him inside a nightclub. He allegedly shot a New York man after a confrontation outside.
Many charter change supporters in Burlington say another issue in the debate is local control. “It boggles my mind that legislators from small towns far away assume that when it comes to gun safety one size fits all, and that they know better than we in Burlington on how best to protect our citizens from gun violence,” said Bill Mares, a Burlington resident and former state representative.
City Councilor Kurt Wright, R-Ward 4, who also serves as a state representative, voted in favor of the resolution, but he also did his best to set expectations with the council about the prospects for the city’s charter changes in Montpelier.
“I don’t want anyone to think this is a slam dunk that the (House Government Operations Committee) is going to send this forward,” Wright said. The committee, he said, voted 10-1 against the charter changes last year. Wright pointed to concerns around the constitutionality of the charter changes and lawmakers’ hesitancy to create a “patchwork” of local gun control rules.
City Attorney Eileen Blackwood said she has worked with Burlington’s legislators to tweak the charter changes to address constitutional concerns. Wright said he had not realized the measures were being redrafted.
Rep. Joanna Cole, D-Burlington, a member of the House Government Operations Committee, reintroduced the charter changes Friday with fixes meant to avoid constitutional challenges.
Tom Ayers, a Democratic city councilor from Ward 7, said it should be the courts — not the Government Operations Committee — where issues of constitutionality are resolved.
Rep. Donna Sweaney, D-Windsor, the committee chairwoman, said in an interview Thursday that she didn’t know whether it would be up to Burlington or the state to defend the constitutionality of the charter changes in court.
Sweaney said she was concerned that responsibility might fall to the state, carrying the cost of potential lawsuits. However, when the constitutionality of past city ordinances was challenged in court — such as the Planned Parenthood buffer zone — it was the city that had to defend its own rules.
She is also concerned that allowing guns to be regulated at the municipal level could set a precedent. Gun restrictions, Sweaney said, should be addressed as a statewide issue.
Nonetheless, the revised changes will get a hearing this month in her committee, she said. Lawmakers will take testimony in the coming weeks, once the House has passed the budget adjustment act and dealt with any changes to the state’s new education law, Act. 46.
Among several other committee members interviewed by VTDigger, support was tepid at best. “They better be a lot different,” said Rep. Robert LaClair, R-Barre Town, of the redrafted charter changes.
House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morrisville, said he appreciates the “concerns” raised by Burlington’s charter changes, but he too said he’s hesitant about their prospects for passage by the Legislature.
“It conflicts directly with the Sportsmen’s Bill of Rights, and it’s not clear to me we’ve resolved that particular issue,” Smith said, referring to a 1988 state law that bars municipalities from regulating guns. Supporters of the changes note that charters are state laws as well, and the Legislature is able to pass laws that preempt prior ones.
Smith said if the measures were to pass the Government Operations Committee, he would bring the charter changes to a vote on the House floor only if there are enough votes for passage.
“And my sense is if they put these on the floor, they would lose,” he said.
“They’re a threat to our Vermont Sportsmen’s Bill of Rights,” Hughes said, adding that his group would “vigorously protect that statute.”
Hughes said that although there was no “quid pro quo” agreement with legislative leaders that if gun legislation passed in 2015, lawmakers wouldn’t push for further regulation in the second half of the biennium, “our expectation is that after last year, everybody will want to step back for a while.”
Sen. Phil Baruth, D-Chittenden, an ardent supporter of gun control and the Burlington measures, said he too feels the malaise in Montpelier when it comes to gun regulations this session.
“I can tell you that when we passed that bill last year, I sat through three hours of open testimony in the House chamber. It was a draining experience. There were angry people on both sides. There were people crying on both sides,” Baruth said.
“It’s a wrenching issue, and that sort of angst diffuses itself through the whole building. The whole building spent political capital to move that through. I’m appreciative of that,” he said. The experience, he said, likely left many lawmakers hesitant to re-engage the gun issue.
Baruth said despite the long odds, he would continue to work with city officials and legislators who represent Burlington to see if they can advance the charter changes.
Further mass shootings in the U.S. last year, and the recent homicide on Church Street, in the “heart of the city,” have increased the urgency for sensible gun safety measures, Baruth said.
Rep. Chris Pearson, P-Burlington, said he too will push to have Burlington’s charter changes considered. Pearson said he may also pursue allowing police to confiscate guns from people suspected of domestic violence as a state law.
That measure, he said, appears to have the most support among lawmakers. It could also force lawmakers who say they support the intent of Burlington’s charter changes, but are concerned about creating a patchwork of gun regulations, to take a position on the measures themselves.
Asked about the potential for some or all of Burlington’s charter changes to become state law, Hughes said, “That’s something at this point we don’t even want to contemplate.”
