by Sen. Terry Williams
Editor’s Note: S.3, ‘prohibiting paramilitary training camps,’ sponsored by Sen. Phil Baruth, has passed the Vermont Senate. In a note received Friday, Sen. Terry Williams explains why he opposed it.
My grandson decided to quit college and go in the Army. Once he signed up, he started asking his father and me about what training we had and what training he would need to successfully complete his basic combat training. He has been shooting, hunting and fishing with us since he was old enough to complete his hunter safety course. He is a member of a local shooting range, and he goes to that range with his father regularly. He is an avid outdoorsman and sportsman.
My two sons and I are combat veterans and have had extensive military training and, by virtue of our rank and leadership positions were all military trainers.
My family owns some timberland on top of a mountain in Southern Vermont. We took my grandson up to our hunting camp to start his training. This training included basic land navigation with a map and compass, navigating using terrain association, proper movement techniques in wooded, mountainous terrain, how to identify possible ambush locations, etc.
My neighbor and I have had a history of disputes over a right of way and boundaries of our property where we were doing this training for my grandson. Consequently, he didn’t like me very much. We nearly ended up in court a couple of times and the dispute had the potential to become physical at one point. This went on for 33 years.
When we went to my property to train my grandson, we were all wearing the military uniforms and load-bearing equipment that we all owned, and we carried modern sporting rifles because we all know that you “train the way you fight” which means with the equipment you will have carry and fight with.
If S.3 is signed into law, and I believe that it will, and my neighbor knew we were there training with my grandson, he would have a reason to turn us in as operating a para-military camp. So, once this bill passes into law, who will decide what is a para-military training or a para-military training camp? Doesn’t our Vermont constitution provide for militia training in small towns? I think it does.
I won’t get into the optics part of the many recent bills presented by Senator Baruth and others in this legislative body, but he used (and went into quite a bit of detail on the senate floor about) the situation with the shooting range in Pawlet owned by Mr. Daniel Banyai to justify passage of this bill. In fact, there are always two sides to every story and somewhere in between lies the truth of that whole situation. Senator Baruth doesn’t know the entire story.
If there is a message in this response, it is that the Vermont legislature and others here in Montpelier continue to pass feel good, redundant laws which will never be enforced until people who don’t know the whole story want them to be.
I will always question the constitutionality of bills like S.3, S.4, S.11, S.31, S.40, S.57 and S.22. The framers of our US and Vermont constitution expected better than what I am seeing from this legislature.
The author is a state senator for Rutland County.