by Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Attempts to push a so-called “universal background check” measure in Vermont have failed, as the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee was quoted by the Burlington Free Press as stating the measure is “dead.”
“Quite frankly,” Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington) told the newspaper, “it’s dead.”
He was referring to S. 31, a measure supported by Gun Sense Vermont (GSV). After a heated public hearing, during which Sears actually unloaded on the head of a state gun rights organization, the background check bill had apparently collided with a wall. Yet GSV co-founder Ann Braden was quoted by Seven Days insisting that the fight is not over.
“We have a very long view on this,” she told Seven Days. “This is a long-term campaign to really change the conversation, so we can pass legislation to keep guns out of the wrong hands.”
TGM’s call to Sears was not immediately returned.
- 31 contained provisions also for prohibiting gun possession by convicted violent felons, but even the Vermont ACLU seemed to oppose that part of the legislation.
The background check legislation appeared closely patterned after similar measures currently being fought out west. Washington state voters passed a background check initiative last November, but it is now being challenged in federal court by the Second Amendment Foundation and others.
Neighboring Oregon has legislation moving in Salem, and there is an initiative campaign similar to the one in Washington now being waged in Nevada.
Vermont is home to the original “constitutional carry” scenario, which allows open or concealed carry in a peaceable manner without any kind of permit or license, the result of a court ruling dating back a century, rather than some legislative doctrine. The state has a rather low violent crime rate. Its legislators do not maintain offices, staffs or even individual telephone numbers in the capitol at Montpelier, according to a contact at the office of the Sergeant at Arms.
