by Paul Dame
Democrats have once again passed a law that encourages everyone to go out and buy a gun immediately – before you can’t.
This weekend on July 1st a number of new restrictions, taxes and fees will go into effect thanks to the Democratic Supermajority. A lot of ink has already been spilled about the rise in economic penalties many of us will have to pay for the Democrats’ plans to change our lives according to their preferences, including paying more for your driver’s license renewal and your car registration. This will happens despite the fact that the DMV didn’t request these increases to cover their cost of operations, and a few years ago Democrats convinced us we needed to spend $80 Million on a DMV software program to stop the cost increases. And many already know about the record-setting $8.5 Billion budget that also comes with a new payroll tax, and an almost certain increase in property taxes next fall.
But what may have escaped your attention is that Democrats have implemented a new infringement on your second amendment right (and an infringement on your rights under Article 16 of the VT Constitution) to legally purchase a firearm. If you pay for a firearm on Friday, you can take it home the same day. But if you wait until Saturday July 1st, you will be subject to a new 3-day waiting period that even some Democrats admitted was probably unconstitutional.
So Democrats are sending a clear message; don’t wait until you think you need a gun to buy one – you need to buy it earlier, at least 3 days or more early. Since you can’t know exactly when you will need a gun for self-defense the best chance you have to be ready is to buy one this week before the new restriction goes in to law.
This is the thing that really makes my blood boil about these gun laws. The more laws they pass, the greater urgency I have to buy a gun. When I knew that I could get one whenever I wanted, and felt assured that the right would always be free to exercise – I didn’t feel the need to exercise it. I didn’t own a gun, but when Democrats passed a law outlawing magazines of a certain capacity, I went out and bought a few – even though I didn’t have a firearm to use them with. But if I didn’t buy them at that time, I would have been prohibited from buying them today, or some other date in the future when I wanted or needed them. Now that Democrats are pushing further gun control laws I, and other Vermonters, are being pressured to buy a guy before Friday because who knows what they will try to do next.
The idea is that this new law is supposed to reduce the impulsiveness of buying a gun as a suicide prevention measure. So a rational person would wonder why it restricts all Vermonters, including those who already own several fire arms, from purchasing a new one when they need it. But the reality is that Democrats don’t actually care if your rights are infringed, or if the law infringes on freedom more than it protects lives. Many of them get a lot of money from non-profit and political action groups to advance the policy that is put before them and not ask too many questions. So as long as they keep getting that money and winning their re-election they don’t have to trouble themselves with the constitutionality of a bill, or the effect it has on people, especially people who don’t vote that regularly. If Democrats think they can make anything marginally better by taking away your rights, they have no aversion to doing it.
Ironically, if someone were to try to purchase a gun when the law goes in to affect on July 1st, the 72-hour waiting period would end on July 4th, Independence Day. So on the very first day that you would legally be able to take possession of your firearm under state law, the federal holiday will likely prevent you from doing so.
But until we recruit more Republicans to run for office to stop this nonsense, and convince more voters who care about gun rights to start voting consistently against those who have proven they have a low regard for our constitutional rights, the Democrats in the supermajorty will keep pushing father and farther to see how far they can go.
Vermont used to be a leader in protecting the rights of gun owners. To commemorate this proud heritage and show your support for gun rights, you can get one of the first “Constitutional Carry Cards” which shows how Vermont’s permitless carry has spread across the country. CLICK HERE to order yours today!
The author is an Essex Junction resident and chair of the Vermont Republican Party.
Categories: Commentary, Gunrights, Legislation
Paul, how many times have you had to use a gun in self-defense? 67 years and counting for me, never had to use one.
A gun is like a fire extinguisher. Better to have and not need than need and not have.
Guns are like a parachute. If you don’t have one when you need one, you will never need one again !
Fire extinguishers aren’t the leading cause of death for children; guns are.
Do you have auto insurance? How often have you used it?
My cousin in Ukraine used to ask me that when he made fun of American’s “love of guns”.
Can’t remember him saying anything in the last few years though.
You are never going to stop the Commiecrat majority in this state with a governor like Eunuch Phil Scott the King of Castrati. Eunuch Phil started the ball rolling when he emboldened the Commiecrats bu signing the Universal Background Check and Maga zine Ban after he campaigned on being a conservative and told us he would protect our gun rights. It was only natural that the Commiecrats took their cue from Phil to go further. Now Mrowicki from Putney wants register guns and for us to purchase insurance for every gun we may own. And after that they will try to restrict our access to acquire ammunition. I am only wondering what unique excuse they will use to do it.
“New Hampshire has: Open carry, no licensing or permitting requirements, no magazine restrictions, no “assault weapons ban”, no background checks for private sales. Yet they have: No mass shootings since 1982, a lower murder rate than NY, CA, NJ & IL. – Jack V. Lloyd – April 23, 2023
The politicians who have created and passed this legislation are traitors to the Constitution of the United States, the Vermont Constitution and their Oath of Office.
Robert A. Heinlein: “There are no dangerous weapons. There are only dangerous men”.
And these are dangerous men. These are what I call domestic enemies.
Phil didn’t even veto this even though he said it sounded like it was unconstitutional.
He just let it slide by with no resistance.
Do you suppose that it is a coincidence that crime committed with a firearm has risen since the implementation of stronger “gun control” measures ? It’s kinda like a math problem. More restrictions on lawful gun owners = more dirt bags taking advantage of it . It’s real simple math .
At the bottom of the page Paull shills for a phony Constitutional Carry card that the $$$ benefits the Republican Party. Save your money buy a gun or ammo, you will need it in the future. It will serve you better in your closet than the Republican Party.
Mr. Dame,
Evan Hughes, (may he rest in peace) probably Vermont’s greatest watch dog of all things related to the 2nd Amendment, and Article 16, used to publish in his blog how much money the out of state anti firearm groups would spend in this state. The money was astounding for a state of 600,000 people ! I realize Evan’s shoes were big ones to fill, but I wish some one would continue this informational effort to educate gun owners in this state. Maybe if this information was published on a bigger platform than Evan’s Vt. Guns blog more people would see it, and understand what we freedom loving, gun owning Vermonters are up against . Until the State of Vermont starts regulating out of state money that being used to fund lobbyists here in this Liberal/Socialist petri dish to create their utopian society, this incursion into personal liberties will continue. You’re against Chinese money buying land in the “land of the free” ? Why should Bloomberg’s New York money be tolerated, and allowed to interfere with our liberties in Vermont ? Until Vermont is indeed “for Vermonters” the rich, out of state carpetbaggers will continue to use us as their personal experimental . They need to go home !
All out of state money coming into Vermont for state and local offices should be banned. Everyone talks about leveling the playing field but not really. The problem with Vermont right now is that the super majority will not allow any laws to interfere with their power to control elections, ethics or voting machines and mailing the whole world VT ballots.
And we have those old democrat gun owning hunters that say, “they’ll never come after my hunting rifle” and they vote democrat even though they have no idea how badly they are getting screwed. This is not your granddaddy’s democratic party. It’s now the party of the woke progressive cult because the democrats let them steel their party.
They won’t go after their guns until after they classify it a sniper rifle which we all know are WEAPONS OF WARRRRR
The problem Mr. Dame is the people you are recruiting are not conservatives. Not all “republicans” are conservatives, for example our governor who did not veto the bill. This is what happens when you choose a big tent philosophy.
Paul; last November I slid my VT ballot into a machine labeled “DOMINION”. Read the Halderman Report released this month. Read the CISA report from last year: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/ics-advisories/icsa-22-154-01. Until you name and work for election integrity, your republican electioneering is just a grift.
Kind of like the card that he offers at the bottom of the article.
Freud was right:
“I, and other Vermonters, are being pressured to buy a guy”
All picking aside I was trying to figure out what bothered me so much about this article. I think I figured it out.
The writer of the article is the leader of the Republican party, and should be not only a leader of the party but a champion for our 2A rights. Yet he knows nothing about guns or laws surrounding them. No wonder we lose our gun rights, the highest office holder in the land and the leader of the party don’t care about gun rights.
Instead we get a childish argument that it “makes me want to get something because I can’t have it”, with some whining in the middle about not enough people behind me (which really means lack of leadership), followed by a low grade cheesy grift.
“This is the thing that really makes my blood boil about these gun laws. The more laws they pass, the greater urgency I have to buy a gun.”
No Paul, the thing that should make your blood boil is they are attempting to take your ability to protect yourself and your family away from you, disobeying their oath so they can remain in power and make money.
What makes my blood boil is the ineffective leadership presented in this article.
Does the 2nd say: anyone has the right to any weapon, any time, any where? No, it doesn’t. Warren Burger, former Chief Justice of the SCOTUS said that interpretation is fraudulent. The second amendment was intended to be primarily communal right, not an individual right. If you actualy read all of it, you would see that. But you don’t.
Warren Burger? The same court that gave us Roe v Wade, just overturned.
Pay particular attention to. McDonald v Chicago
The 2nd Amendment was created by the founding fathers to give “We The People” the means to protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights from those who would take them from us. You can’t take away someone’s right to free speech, freedom of assembly or freedom of religion without first taking away their ability to resist. THE 2nd AMENDMENT DOES NOT GRANT US THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS. THE 2nd AMENDMENT TELLS THE GOVERNMENT IT CANNOT INFRINGE ON OUR RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS – PERIOD! THEREFORE, ALL GUN CONTROL UNDER THE CONSTITUTION IS ILLEGAL! Government does not give us our rights. Our rights are not given to us by the Constitution. Our rights are given to us by God and are inherent to us as human beings and by the Laws of Nature. These rights that we are born with are affirmed to us by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments of the Constitution and specify what the government can and can not do to us as citizens of the United States. Government’s only power is the power which is enumerated to it by the Constitution. The federal government, a state, county or town can not pass a law contrary to the Constitution. Article 6 the Supremacy Clause makes the Constitution the supreme law of the land. Under our Constitution the government is not delegated the authority to legislate, enforce, or adjudicate laws pertaining to the exercise of our rights under the Constitution. The government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to require the government’s permission to exercise any right affirmed to us under the Constitution. The government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to compel us to waive our guaranteed 4th Amendment right to be secure from unwarranted interrogation, search, or seizure in the absence of probable cause of criminal conduct. Or compel us to waive our guaranteed 5th Amendment right to due process as a precondition to being allowed (or denied) the exercise of our right to keep and bear arms. This violation of our 4th and 5th Amendment rights happens every time that we are interrogated under penalty of perjury without probable cause that a crime has been committed when we fill out B.A.T.F.E form 4473 to purchase a firearm. The government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to compel us to waive our 10th Amendment right to a federal government exercising only those powers delegated to it by the United States Constitution, and State governments are prohibited the exercise of any power prohibited to the States by the United States Constitution.
The government is not delegated the authority under the 14th Amendment to make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Government is not delegated by our Constitution the authority to license firearm dealers or operate or fund the most powerful anti-rights government agency on the planet called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Since no Amendment in the Bill of Rights has been repealed thru Article V or by a National Convention of States, the only legal way to change the Constitution, all existing gun control laws presently violate five Amendments of the Bill of Rights and goes against the settled law of two Supreme Court decisions, Heller vs the District of Columbia 2008 and McDonald vs Chicago 2010. Both decisions affirm that the people’s right to keep and bear arms is an individual right and that citizens are allowed firearms in common use, those small arms or those that operate like them and are issued to our National Guard which comprises of citizen soldiers. In the Second Militia Act of 1792 Congress specified the arms militia members were to have. It was incumbent on militia members to report to training and duty with their own arms and ammo. So one of the primary purposes of the 2nd Amendment was to ensure that the militia would not be disarmed by taking away guns from the people who constituted the militia.
The purpose of compelled background checks as a precondition to allowing or denying the transfer of a firearm is to deceive firearm owners and prospective owners into unknowingly waiving their rights guaranteed by the 2nd, 4th, 5th, 10th and 14th Amendments so they will have no rights left to claim when the government decides to register and confiscate our firearms. We have a right to keep and bear arms, not a privilege to keep and bear arms. Our rights are beyond the reach of the government and no citizen has to ask government permission to exercise a right. Government has no authority delegated to it by the Constitution to deceive its citizens into waiving their rights or acquiescing to the loss of their rights by subterfuge, scam, fraud, or force. DO NOT VOLUNTARILY GIVE UP YOUR RIGHTS!
You are not a constitutional scholar, but in a sense you’re correct. The communal right is for all persons living in the USA. It’s listed 2nd in the Bill of individual Rights, the first 10 amendments added to the constitution before the colonies would agree to ratify it in 1789. The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. Note that it doesn’t say guns, muskets or firearms. Well regulated in the 1700’s meant having the same equipment in good order to bring to the militia. Who was the militia? Every man of a certain age for being capable to defend the country. All of this is documented in the Federalist Papers (historical documents) for people who make up their own definitions of the constitution. History is a wonderful thing if you read it. There are more than 500 million privately owned firearms and billions of rounds of ammunition. The rest of the world knows the USA is heavily armed and we haven’t been invaded. No one is going to disarm the American people.
True.
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/545847-according-to-the-founders-all-federal-gun-restrictions-are/#:~:text=There's%20also%20ample%20evidence%20from,tyrannical%20governments%2C%20including%20the%20federal
The 2nd amendment is partially rooted in our racist past, as well as the insistence of it being an absolute is rooted with today’s white privilege on steroids.
There are three main reasons the 2nd was written into the constitution and the third one might surprise your typical gun nut extremists:
1) Slaves had to be controlled, and one of the things the well regulated militia part was referring to was the formation of Slave patroles.
2) Also, well regulated militia part refers to was the need to engage in the campaigns against the native tribes that were to be eradicated or relocated to reservations.
3) The founders were very reluctant to having a large standing professional military; as students of history, they understood how Republics can be undermined by them. Look at the Roman Empire. Look at ours which is crumbling while we spend all most a $1 trillion dollars on it yearly, to engage forever wars, while there is homeless under every bridge that them selves are in bad shape. Eisenhower warned us about that on his way out the door. Ours is a Republic in name only. Instead of a government that serves the population as a whole, it serves the corporate oligarchy, and a bloated military industrial establishment.
This well cultivated, fear based gun gun fetish serves as the ultimate culture war distraction. If people are made to think that all of there rights come from the right to a gun, then they will except being deprived of the right to universal healthcare, affordable housing, education with out debt, the ability to make a decent living, etc.
No wonder you’re so easily bamboozled by a narcissistic former reality show host hell bent on bringing down what’s left of the American Republic.
Just wow Ivan…. Really showing some insight here.
FIrst I’d love to see how you prove 1 and 2 to be correct. Have links to anything but the 1619 project?
Second you say: “The founders were very reluctant to having a large standing professional military; as students of history, they understood how Republics can be undermined by them” so you are aware that country’s often get toppled by ruthless dictators and history proves that. It also proves that often times when guns get lawed out of existence or confiscated that the country becomes a communist dictatorship shortly there after.
You then go on to say: “Look at ours which is crumbling while we spend all most a $1 trillion dollars on it yearly, to engage forever wars, while there is homeless under every bridge that them selves are in bad shape” so you acknowledge that the country has a problem with it’s military industrial complex and isn’t taking care of it’s people.
Yet you advocate to remove the 2nd amendment or limit what guns the American people can own, with those problems at their door?
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Do you shoot yourself in the head after too?
Um…the race card? Seriously? I find it interesting that USA history is the only country on the globe that the Left declares is racist and attaches it to anything and everything. Particularly, when most are descendants of immigrants escaping the very real unequal, discriminating governments and violent warlords. The projection and lack of realism is truly remarkable. The country is not without it’s disappointments and mistakes. Yet, if one were to really study, research and discover who was behind those mistakes then, the Truth is likely to make them want to puke in their shoes. The same strings behind pulled by the same puppet Masters. Wash, rinse, and repeat the same old lies and deceptions of the same Masters. Tiresome, boring, lazy, and lame. The right to defend shall not be infringed…deal with it.
I despair of the Vermont Republican Party. The subtext of Mr. Dane’s article is that guns are bad (he never owned one) but regulating them is counter productive (regulations make him want to buy a gun).
This is wrong. Guns are neither good nor bad. In fact there is no correlation between gun ownership rates and rates of gun crime in the US. Look it up.
And as to Mr Smith’s amazing ability to read the minds of men who died centuries ago, it would seem that it is only dead minds which are susceptible to his amazing talents. He doesn’t even try to divine the intentions of those who use emotionally charged, dishonest stories to take our rights away.
Government should not interfere in areas that are constitutionally barred from such. That includes guns.
I remember another “Peter Smith” Nuff said…….
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/545847-according-to-the-founders-all-federal-gun-restrictions-are/#:~:text=There's%20also%20ample%20evidence%20from,tyrannical%20governments%2C%20including%20the%20federal
KrisAnn Hall, JD: “If society is honest and historically accurate, the only question that has any relevance to the gun control debate is, Do you trust those in government, now and in the future, to not take your life, liberty or property thru force of government? If the answer to that question is “no”, the gun control debate is over”.
The constitution being interpreted one way or another doesn’t change the fact that all HUMANS, regardless of where they live in the world SHOULD have the ability to arm and protect themselves with anything at their disposal.
Period.
So true! Every time gun control is threatened, more guns are sold. You’d think Democrats were getting a commission 🙄
They are, they just choose to do it in the stock market and with bigger guns. #Ukraine.
State gun laws are a boon for the gun dealer industry. Scare everyone into thinking that you won’t ever be able to purchase a gun again, people go in droves and buy guns, knowing full well those ‘new restrictions’ are BS and don’t hold constitutional weight. I’m sure theres D’s & R’s that buy stock in those companies and profit off the little wave of sales. Like I always say, follow the money.
Yup….Dame is a popular guy. Seems like he ought to man up here and defend himself, but I suppose he’s not really into defense of any type.
Well done. Let’s keep pointing the fingers at each other. If the parties weren’t just parties building their war chest for their next scrimmage against the other perhaps they wouldn’t have betrayed your fellow statesmen.It’s all about the power and control for the Uniparty in both Montpelier and D,C, Shame on you unworthy SchMucks. You sold your own countrymen and families out. There is a higher power you all shall answer to.