By Paul Bean
While we may be well versed in the true meaning of Freedom of Speech and our First Amendment rights, Guy Page and I are no gun experts. Which is why we rely on our friends over at Parro’s Gun Shop in Waterbury to help us navigate all of the legal nuances with our Second Amendment Right to bare arms.
Lawmakers on February 28 introduced, H.381 a bill that seeks to prohibit the manufacture, distribution, sale, purchase, or transfer of gas-operated semi-automatic firearms, a category that includes popular rifle models like the AR-15.
Some critics of me personally said that I didn’t know what I was talking about when it came to this bill. “The bill (H.381) targets gas-operated systems, mainly in assault rifles, not all semiautomatics. Pistols and submachine guns typically use blowback systems (not that you’d know Paul). Maybe read the bill before freaking out next time.” wrote Sam Donnelly on X in reply to my post“Vermont liberal lawmakers trying to ban Semiautomatic weapons…”
“For someone who claims to care about transparency and truth, you sure do generalize and mislead people a lot,” replied Donelly as a final little jab.
In fact, the AR-15 (which stands for Armalite Rifle, not Assault Rifle as often assumed), is a gas-operated firearm.
Opponents, such as myself, Guy Page, and Parro’s Gun Shop, see the bill as an overreach that infringes on Second Amendment rights. Upon further research and review of the proposed legislation, users on X pointed out below Sam’s post that gas-operated systems included a very high percentage of firearms.
So we determined it was worth a trip over to Parro’s to become a little more familiar with what we were talking about! Yesterday we had the opportunity to go up to Parro’s and shoot some gas operated firearms on their state of the art facility for REAL education. Firearms we shot included the AR-15, AK-47, and Fully Automatic MP5.
Here is Jaxson from Parrro’s explaining gas operated AR-15 as well as me testing out the AK-47 and AR-15:
It seems the White House and the newly appointed FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino were in alignment with out content yesterday posting this to their X page following Bongino’s visit to the the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Guy Page and I will be discussing this more today on Friday at Four, as well as the State of Freedom of Speech in Vermont, Our Gun rights, updates on the Clean Heat Stand Repeal, Education, and more!
Be sure to tune in at Four!