by Mike Bielawski
At Burlington’s second Public Safety Community Forum Tuesday evening, President Pro Tempore of the Senate Philip Baruth of Burlington, D/P-Chittenden-Central District, suggested that the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is “insane”.
And he insinuated that the nation’s founding fathers were just OK with beating their wives.
“We happen to have a Supreme Court right now that is and was in part picked because of their views on guns, and they are in place to enact a regime around firearms that I find insane, to use a blunt term,” he told the crowd.
He expressed frustration with the Bruen decision (Bruen v. New York, 2022) which established that the Second Amendment is a fundamental Constitutional right. Baruth does not agree with that assessment.
“The Bruen decision puts a historical test in place and says if in X way in the founding era or up to the 19th century, then you can’t regulate them in the current moment,” he said.
He continued about another case.
“So there was a judge in, I believe an appellate judge, who found it unconstitutional to prevent someone who had been convicted of domestic violence from going out and buying weapons, and he upheld that man’s right to go out and buy weapons because in the founding era, there was no problem with beating your wife,” he said.
Multiple new gun laws?
Baruth’s response was to a preselected question for the community forum. The questioner was not identified.
“In countries such as New Zealand and Norway, leadership reduces the number of guns significantly after mass shootings and gun violence, and gun violence has gone way down. How can we do this in Burlington?”
It continues to suggest a gun-buy-back program among other gun-control initiatives.
“Is a gun buyback program a possibility? Can we increase permitting and training requirements for guns to be carried in Burlington? Can we restrict areas where guns are allowed such as bars, the marketplace, city parks, etc.? Can we keep better track of those who have domestic violence records and make sure they don’t have access to guns?”
It continues with more suggestions.
Continued staffing shortages
Another question was directed to Burlington Police Chief Jon Murad and it concerned the current ongoing staff shortages at their department.
“As everyone saw on that graph, no we are not fully staffed,” Murad said. “Building back and growing back from that cliff that we experienced over two years of attrition is going to take longer than that cliff took.
“We’re working hard, you saw the photograph of the new recruits. I don’t unfortunately think we are going to have that strong a class for our next class which is in February.”
Earlier in the evening he had talked more about this matter.
“What this translates to and I’ll show it on the next slide is a picture of a department that used to field as many as 52 non-supervisory sworn police officers on patrol and about 10-to-12 non-supervisory detective bureau and it can no longer do that,” he said.
He next showed a graph illustrating that only 21 officers are currently on patrol, despite massive rises in crime over the same period that these officers were lost.
More of the public asked questions to the panel. The whole hour and 12-minute video can be seen here.
The author is a reporter for the Vermont Daily Chronicle