NEWPORT TOWN — The proposal came nearly three hours into the meeting inside Newport Town School: Would residents stand against further regulations on guns?
“I’ve been seeing the attack on our Second Amendment, and it’s been getting worse and worse,” said resident Tom Pingree, who on Tuesday read aloud a pitch from Gun Owners of Vermont calling for the creation of sanctuary communities across the state.
By adopting that moniker, towns show solidarity in a “symbolic act of civil disobedience,” the grassroots group says.
But after Pingree made his case, and a selectboard member suggested the audience signal whether members would support a resolution, one attendee spoke out: “We can’t vote on this.”
And they wouldn’t, the meeting moderator said, before allowing a straw poll on the idea that showed fewer than two dozen supporters among the several dozen people sitting in the school gymnasium the night of Town Meeting Day.
Gun Owners of Vermont believed as of Monday that 11 towns would consider the group’s proposal during their annual meetings: Calais, Cavendish, Chester, Lowell, Newport Town, Northfield, Plymouth, Reading, Warren, Weathersfield and Westminster.
But nothing came up about the proposal in seven of those towns, according to local officials in each.
And the idea faltered in three of the four towns that saw mention of it in their meetings.
Cavendish residents voted down a resolution 33–31 after a discussion that dominated the town’s Monday meeting, according to the Chester Telegraph, an online news outlet covering communities in Windsor County.
In Northfield, after a resident raised the issue, the meeting moderator ruled out discussion on it because it hadn’t been warned ahead time.
The resident moved to rescind that ruling, but that effort failed by a sizable amount, Town Manager Jeff Schulz said, estimating that the vote margin was “almost 3-to-1.”
And in Newport Town, no formal vote came after the straw poll, with the moderator assuring one concerned citizen that the results of the survey wouldn’t be included as an official part of the Town Meeting Day record.
Only Lowell, another Orleans County town, approved the proposal.
“There was quite a bit of discussion about it,” said Rep. Mark Higley, R-Lowell, who is also one of the town’s listers. “It was pretty heartfelt. There were a lot of ladies that got up and spoke, actually, about being very supportive.”
Several residents also brought up concerns about automatic firearms, Higley said, before a voice vote overwhelmingly supported the sanctuary resolution.
“It’s critical and it’s inspiring to see individuals in these towns that are stepping up and coming forth with this resolution because it’s hard, a lot of times, for folks to come to a public hearing regarding this down in Montpelier,” he said.
Gun Owners of Vermont president Eric Davis, who spoke to VTDigger last month about the effort, said Thursday that the Town Meeting Day outcomes were partly due to unfulfilled commitments by activists and a reluctance from other residents.
He contacted VTDigger after this story was initially published.
“We didn’t get a whole lot of participation,” Davis said. “A lot of the towns didn’t feel comfortable with it.”
People who said they’d bring up the proposal didn’t, he said, and some of those who did were told that the annual meetings weren’t a good venue for the pitch.
“We’re still continuing to do this thing, and we’re going to do it with the selectboards or by a special vote if needed,” he said.
Because the proposals spurred so much discussion, he added, “We look at this as a first step — and not a last by any stretch.”
By mid-February, the group had won support from selectboards in Clarendon, Concord, Derby, Holland, Irasburg, Morgan, Searsburg, Stamford, Pittsford, Poultney and Pownal.
“We have two dozen more towns that are in some stage of the process,” Davis said then. “A lot of selectboards don’t feel comfortable passing it on their own so they tell people to bring it up at town meeting.”
That’s what happened in Newport Town. And in Lowell, said Higley, who noted that the town of Eden also passed a resolution during its annual meeting.
The group’s resolution, which isn’t legally binding, is modeled after efforts in other states. It came partly in response to calls for tighter firearms regulations after highly publicized mass shootings.
Gun Sense Vermont, a gun-violence prevention group, opposed the proposals. “2nd Amendment ‘sanctuary’ resolutions can leave Vermonters thinking they are not protected by state law. Constitutionality is decided in the courts. Always,” the group tweeted Monday. “Speak out against these resolutions at your town meeting tomorrow.”
Higley said he believed that some of the failures on Town Meeting Day happened in part because of a “concerted effort on some” to attend meetings in opposition to the resolution. And in cases where the item wasn’t warned, he said it’s possible people left by the time the idea came up under other business at the end of a meeting.
“It sounds like the effort is still there to try to do a petition signing,” he said, optimistic.
On Monday, Gun Owners of Vermont listed seven towns on a map that had petitions for support circulating. One was Lyndon.
James Nagle, who WCAX reported is running for one of Caledonia County’s Senate seats, described his attempt to introduce a petition for the effort at the town’s annual meeting in a post on the Gun Owners of Vermont Facebook group.
“There were no other gun owners in attendance. No one in the meeting would hear the petition. There were approximately 74-100 voters present,” Nagle wrote Tuesday to the group of more than 7,300 members. “Your voice was not heard because you were not there.”
He added later: “I’m sending out this S.O.S. in hopes that you might save our rights. We are counting on you.”
This story was updated after initial publication with comment from Gun Owners of Vermont president Eric Davis, who had not responded to earlier requests for an interview. Also, the Arlington selectboard did not support the measure, as was reported in an earlier version.
