This commentary is by Bob Williamson of South Woodstock, a founding board member of Gun Sense Vermont and a retired teacher and textbook editor.
“Looking into those darling children’s faces, the 20 first-graders, I think back to tiny desks and chairs. Through my tears I notice these angels still have baby teeth. They’d barely had time to dream of the Tooth Fairy, let alone explore their world. All that promise and joy was cut down in a hailstorm of bullets, despite the heroic attempts by their principal and five teachers who defended them like tigresses protecting their cubs.
“It has been four days since a deeply troubled young man shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and wounded a town, Newtown, Connecticut, and I’m still trying to process the horror.”
Those words began my story for a USA Today article right after Newtown. I was asked to write it because my children’s school was ravaged by an armed intruder 35 years ago. My two daughters were spared, but only by dumb luck. One youngster was killed and five others were critically wounded.
That tragedy happened in Winnetka, Illinois, a sleepy town like Newtown, like Woodstock, and too many others.
Understand, I grew up with guns, loved target shooting. I firmly believe in the Second Amendment, all 26 words, but I also believe James Madison had no idea his words would be twisted to allow rapid-fire combat-style assault rifles.
The time for debating the NRA is over. They won that debate. That’s why these tragedies keep happening.
Experts call gun violence the public health epidemic that it is. We lose more than 45,000 Americans to gunfire each year, 130 every day. Since 1970, more Americans have been killed by bullets than fatalities in all our wars, going back to the Revolutionary War. Since 2020, gun violence is the leading cause of death for children and adolescents, and it’s been the leading cause of death for Black and brown children since 2006.
We had 647 mass shootings in our nation last year. Louisville was the 147th this year, more than one per day. The weapon of choice for mass shooters is the AR-15 because it can inflict maximum damage rapidly. One little girl’s corpse in Uvalde was so disfigured, she could be identified only by her green high-top sneakers.
More than 20 million AR-15 type firearms are in civilian circulation. If we can’t ban them, we should regulate them as we do fully automatic firearms.
Some believe the primary driver of gun violence is mental health. While we surely need to do a much better job dealing with mental health, our nation doesn’t have more mental health problems than the rest of the world. However, we do have the biggest gun violence problem. Access to lethal means provides raging individuals the firepower to lash out with deadly results.
Smart gun laws save lives. In the late 1990s, our group, the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, championed the Safe Neighborhoods Law. It made carrying an unsecured, loaded firearm in a vehicle a class-4 felony. Chicago’s then-Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez said that law was responsible for a 41% drop in drive-by shootings. Craft a smart law, enforce it, and lives will be saved.
Right now in Montpelier we have a smart bill, H.230, that’s focused on Vermont’s huge gun suicide problem. In 2021, 142 Vermonters took their own life, an all-time high (71 by a firearm), and the suicide rate of our military vets is nearly three times higher than the national average.
The suicidal act is impulsive. Ready access to lethal means enables a deadly “resolution” to a temporary problem. H.230 includes a 72-hour waiting period (to provide time and space as a buffer), a safe storage provision, and a stronger extreme risk protection order (so family members can petition the court to have firearms temporarily removed from a loved one in crisis).
The waiting period has the added benefit to curtail the migration of Vermont firearms to crime scenes in other states: 6,333 firearms used in a crime between 2017 and 2021 were traced to Vermont (Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives).
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark says H.230 is a good bill and will save lives, and H.230 has the approval of nearly all medical organizations in our state. However, Gov. Phil Scott sounds like he will veto it.
We have the chance to save lives with H.230. Let the governor know how you feel.
No single law will make all gun violence vanish, but a critical mass of evidence-based measures will make us safer. Every thoughtful step matters.
