This commentary is by Norm Vandal, a resident of Roxbury.
Chris Bradley, a Northfield businessman, is a professional lobbyist for gun rights. He is the president of an organization that primarily lobbies for gun rights in Vermont, having the misleading name “The Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs.”’
When his organization decided to support a defendant in a case regarding purchasing high-capacity magazines that are now illegal in Vermont, his organization handed out free high-capacity magazines in Montpelier, donated by the gun industry that he works for indirectly.
The guy they de facto supported, as basically a vehicle for challenging the law before the Vermont Supreme Court, is a deplorable man named Max Misch, an avowed white nationalist who had harassed and threatened a black woman member of the Vermont House until she quit for her own safety.
Misch and Bradley’s organization lost their case, and a while after the trial, Misch was arrested for witness tampering. Ain’t it lovely. Do you think Bradley really cared who was handed these free magazines? Was this done for your safety?
Chris Bradley is a professional gun rights lobbyist. He knows all the slogans, the catchphrases, the maxims and the presumably logical inferences. So, when he posts in VTDigger, or anywhere, consider that he’s very skilled at presenting basic National Rifle Association crap in such a way that is seemingly inoffensive.
Interestingly, Bradley and Trump both blame the slaughter of little children on broken homes. It’s all a reprehensible, pre-ordained media campaign created to deflect and distract you from the simple fact that there are too many assault rifles in the U.S., and it’s too easy to get them.
Bradley even uses the new party name for these weapons: “modern sporting rifles.” Imagine, our soldiers are fighting wars with “modern sporting rifles.” It’s pathetic.
Bradley believed Vermont should do nothing about bump stocks because he surmised that the U.S. Supreme Court would eventually outlaw them. Then, when he saw that almost no Vermont gun owners turned in their bump stocks, he said that was to be expected since, as he stated, “People were generally not inclined to abide by laws that infringed on their constitutional right to bear arms. … When confronted with a law they felt infringed on their rights, they too willingly became felons.” So, we have felons in possession of bump stocks? It’s illegal for felons to own guns. Maybe some even have a couple of those free, high-capacity magazines?
Now, Bradley proposes that we arm ourselves with more guns, both for our own protection and to help out the police. This is idiotic madness and is socially deviant behavior. Pure and simple, all cherry-picked data aside, more guns mean more gun deaths, more homicides, more suicides by guns, more gun accidents, more intimidation of spouses and children, more killings in our homes and businesses, more threats and more mass killings.
This is the correlation, the equation people like Bradley won’t speak about. In true NRA fashion, he won’t tell you why there are more gun deaths in the U.S. than in any other country on earth. Every time there’s a mass killing, people go out and buy more guns. Bradley says they should, and now he now tells us that this is what the police want, when this is simply not true.
What is true is that police forces have had to become quasi-military organizations, armed to the teeth with assault weapons and all sorts of military weaponry and paraphernalia ostensibly needed to protect us from all the hyper-armed citizens that Bradley says we need a lot more of.
Bradley wants to see more guns because it’s what the gun companies he obliquely represents desire: to sell more guns. And he also knows that more guns in circulation will make it more difficult if we are ever to sensibly limit them. That is likely his motivation, not concern for your safety.
Bradley will cite the terse, linguistically cute, carefully-crafted slogans puked out by the NRA that he has swallowed and willingly regurtitates to anyone willing to lap this up: “The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” or “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Yes, people kill people, even without guns, but people with guns kill many more people, including themselves and loved ones. People with assault weapons kill a hell of a lot more people at a time.
Limiting guns limits the numbers of people who can be killed by them at the hands of people. Also, there are many ways to stop a “bad guy” with a gun than with a gun, but guns in the hands of everyone means that we will have more “bad guys” with them too. Using the term “bad guys” is a also a construct developed to makes us feel more assaulted and more vulnerable, more preyed upon by “them.” This sells guns.
Often, these so-called “bad guys” are people who have become emotionally disturbed or unstable because of myriad, unfortunate, uncontrollable factors, something each and every one of us could experience at most any time. The “them” can be any one of us should circumstances turn dire.
Aside from dedicated, dangerous zealots like Bradley, the real underpinning supporting gun rights is money, lots of money. Since, as Tip O’Neill once supposedly said, “All politics is local,” then exercise your power of the wallet locally. To any legislator in Vermont, the two most prominent faces associated with the gun lobby are Chris Bradley and Eric Davis, also of Northfield, another person who testifies in favor of guns, president of Gun Owners of Vermont (remember, they wanted Vermont communities to become “Second Amendment Communities”), an organization that advocates for absolutely zero compromise on gun rights. Think about this. None!
Last fall, on his front lawn, Bradley displayed the election campaign sign of Ken Goslant, a local Republican House member. Goslant sought out and proudly received a 95% NRA endorsement. Goslant has voted against every piece of legislation pertaining to gun reform and gun safety.
Stand up! Tell these dangerous gun zealots that you abhor their stance, and take your business and your votes elsewhere, even if it means a sacrifice on your part. Stand up for what’s right with actions as well as words.
Another thing you can do locally is stop voting for Republicans, regardless of how long you’ve known them, or think they are good, local folks at heart. They are members of the Republican Party that is the sole impediment for passing common-sense gun control legislation. It’s the choice they’ve made, and they can make a choice to get out.
Like in Washington, they vote consistently with the gun lobby here in Vermont, too. Vote them out. They are a gun rights cancer in our state government, and they will do nothing to stop gun violence.
If you are a responsible hunter, then stop swallowing the NRA crap and have the guts to cease or refuse funding the NRA or such organizations as operated by Bradley and Davis. In the long run, their deplorable vehemence in support of unrestricted gun rights will affect you negatively. It has already. People like Chris Bradley and Eric Davis stand in the way of making our country safer, and are in fact making it more dangerous.
Speak up. Let others know how you feel. When Bradley presents you with this kind of fallacious, dangerous, ridiculous crap, tell him you don’t swallow it. You don’t have to argue or be confrontational. Develop the courage to stand up for all the little children and innocent people who, time and time again, are slaughtered mercilessly all over our country.
