Editor’s note: This commentary is by John Klar, a Vermont grass-fed beef farmer, and an attorney and pastor who lives in Westfield.
[A]nti-gun groups have once again pushed an unnecessary and deceptive bill into our Vermont Legislature, wasting valuable political resources while fostering resentment and division. S.6, which seeks to impose a transfer fee on all private sales of firearms within the state, has been presented by these foreign-funded lobbyists as a panacea to gun violence. The evidence shows that universal background checks would do little to advance safety but very much to undermine personal liberty and self-protection.
On its website, Gun Sense Vermont states that “Background checks are the only systematic way to stop felons, domestic abusers, people with severe mental illness, and other dangerous people from buying guns.” This is simply false: Background checks would have done nothing to prevent Columbine, Las Vegas, Sandy Hook or Sutherland Springs. In fact, the Sutherland Springs shooter was sold guns despite a disqualifying domestic abuse history — that is, the background check system that is supposed to be “the only way” to stop felons failed completely. Only an armed citizen stopped the Texas carnage.
A 2000 Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives study, Following the Gun, analyzed more that 1,530 trafficking investigations and found gun shows to have the second highest number of trafficked guns per investigation — after corrupt Federal Firearms License dealers. S.6 seeks to divert all gun sales through FFLs — even though they are responsible for more gun diversions that gun shows. Further, S.6 does not address gun shows at all — it applies to all private transactions between Vermont citizens (private sales of firearms to out-of-state residents are already illegal under federal law).
A 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics report, Firearms Use By Offenders, found that only 0.8 percent of prison inmates reported acquiring firearms used in their crimes at a gun show: Of some 18,000 inmates, 36.8 percent reported getting the firearm from a family member (exempt under S.6), 20.9 percent off the street.
Universal background checks will impede Vermonters from a long tradition of private sales. And the fee to be charged, dismissed as a trifle, is anything but — a proposed $40 fee on all transfers is patently regressive. Some guns sell for only $100 or less, especially the old shotguns and revolvers that farmers use to slaughter, or homeowners to plink at varmints: $40 is a 40 percent tax on those weapons. In contrast, the rich fellow who pays $1,200 for a fancy bolt-action deer rifle would be paying a tax rate of 3 percent. Imagine Vermont taxing the sale of a used lawn mower. Some would argue that a lawn mower is not as dangerous as a gun: that can be debated, but what can not be debated is that I do not possess a federal and state constitutional right to own a lawn mower. Would a $50 fee on the liberty to write this commentary be acceptable? Or to assemble for worship? Or to vote? Gun control advocates seek to impose a financial burden on a constitutional liberty, as if we are all made of money and just love fees, or as if that can just be done on a whim.
But perhaps the greatest problem with S.6 is not what it fails to do to protect us but what it succeeds in doing to restrict our liberties and expand government power. While Vermont has flaunted federal immigration and cannabis laws, it has secretly provided the database of medical marijuana users to the federal government so that those Vermonters cannot purchase a gun ever again — except from a neighbor in a private, legal sale. Now Gun Sense wants to prevent that also.
The Vermont Legislature cannot be trusted with our guns. Medical marijuana users, enduring chemotherapy, nausea or chronic pain, have had their right to hunt, or to defend themselves, whisked away by this state without even a public discussion. Will the state decide next year to similarly screen people from owning guns who have been medically treated for depression, or PTSD, as is already being done in other states? What guarantee is there that this won’t occur?
I am unaware of a mass shooting committed with a gun purchased at a gun show: Thus, the effort to deprive Vermonters of longstanding liberties in the name of mass shootings is akin to seeking to ban motorcycles after truck attacks — these shootings are not arising from the bogeyman of gun show purchases. But gun control advocates don’t care at all, because they wish to seize all guns eventually. The Second Amendment was incorporated to prevent exactly that.