Jon Margolis is a political columnist for VTDigger.
To their credit, the gun rights advocates urging Vermont towns to join the “Second Amendment Sanctuary” movement on Town Meeting Day freely admit that their effort is a legal fiction.
It’s “a symbolic act of civil disobedience,” says Gun Owners of Vermont in a statement backing the resolution to support “the inalienable rights of all persons … to keep and bear arms.”
Actually, it’s just a symbolic act. There’s no civil disobedience involved. No suggestion that anyone sit down in the road to block traffic or interfere with a meeting of the selectboard.
The resolution does say that the town adopting it “hereby declares all federal and state laws and regulations attempting to restrict these rights to be infringements, hence null and void under this resolution.”
Declare away. Anyone may declare anything, just as Glendower claimed he could “call the spirits from the vasty deep.” (Henry IV, Part 1, Act 3, Scene 1). As he was told, that doesn’t mean they will come. They won’t, and no Vermont town has the power to violate or ignore any federal or state law.
“We’re not asking anyone to break the law,” said Gun Owners of Vermont President Eric Davis in a telephone interview. “This is purely symbolic.”
Symbolic, nothing but, and by all available evidence supported by a very small percentage of the state’s voters. Many towns will probably approve the resolution. Why not? It does no harm. But polling leaves little doubt that something like 90% of Vermonters (and Americans elsewhere) favor the kind of gun safety legislation that the Legislature is pondering (H.610), opposition to which inspired the Gun Owners resolution.
Raising the question of why the resolution is newsworthy. It must be newsworthy because it’s been all over the news: print, electronic and on line, including a story here in VTDigger.org on Feb. 14. But the resolution speaks for very few people and it can have no substantial consequences. Why is it a big deal?
One reason is that Gun Owners of Vermont and its allies are decent fellow citizens whose views deserve an airing. But there’s more to it than that. There’s what could be called the dominant folklore, the story Vermonters tell themselves that somehow the traditional, gun-owning guy (it’s usually a guy) who lives in the country and goes hunting is more authentically a Vermonter than others.
Not so. Every American citizen who lives in Vermont is an equally authentic Vermonter. That’s not an opinion; it’s the U.S. Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States … are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
Furthermore, only about 13% of the state’s adult population goes hunting, most Vermonters do not own guns, and most of those who do approve of restrictions like the one the Legislature is now considering.
In some ways, the Gun Owners resolution illustrates not how they differ from other political factions, but how similar they are. Like many liberals, gun rights advocates exaggerate the power and miscalculate the objectives of their adversaries.
Thus they are convinced that the rather mild bill before the House Judiciary Committee (it would marginally strengthen the existing state “red flag” law allowing temporary confiscation of firearms from a person accused of domestic violence) is merely a prelude to taking away everybody’s guns.
“Most of the gun control groups have that as an end goal,” Davis said.
Not according to their websites and public statements. Not one of the mainstream gun control groups — not the Brady Campaign, Everytown for Gun Safety, Giffords, Mom’s Demand Action — come anywhere close to proposing a ban on gun ownership.
Could it still be their secret long-range goal?
Probably not. With precious few exceptions, advocacy groups say what they mean. It’s the only way they can thrive. In this case it makes no difference. Even if total confiscation of firearms were anyone’s clandestine objective, no one will say so because they know it’s an unobtainable objective.
As evidence that some people really want to outlaw firearms, Eric Davis noted that “that Beto O’Rourke fellow kind of came right out and said” that he would confiscate guns.
He did. But it was only semi-automatic weapons. Besides, look what happened to him. His presidential campaign tanked, and gun control advocates offered him no support.
That’s because they understand that a large majority of voters in this country believe that people should be free to do as they choose unless there is what the law calls “a compelling state interest” to the contrary.
Often the case, which is why people can be forbidden from driving down the highway at 90 miles an hour or dumping their toxic waste in the river. But extrapolating from the most recent Gallup Poll, some 60 million Americans own guns. At least 59 million, 990-some thousands of those people will do no harm with them. There is no compelling state interest in taking firearms away from law-abiding citizens.
Relax, gun owners. Nobody is coming for your weapons. The percentage of people with any interest in so doing is smaller than the percentage of Vermonters in a tizzy over H.610. There are huge majorities for stronger gun safety laws, almost all of them likely to be cleared as constitutional by the courts. There is but an inconsequential minority in favor of taking away everyone’s guns.
So it makes no difference how many towns pass that resolution. Pure symbolism doesn’t have much clout.
