I read True North North Reports, a site that concentrates on VT politics, on a regular basis (Steve’s posts on the ‘Grok get a fairly regular posting there in return!). To be truthful, seeing how far under the Democrat sway that VT has gone the last few years, now to the point of having veto-proof super majorities, I was not surprised to see this headline today (er, Friday).
A Democrat / Uniparty State will do as it wants and, in this case, is attempting to do what the California Democrats keep doing EVEN after SCOTUS’s Bruen decision makes such legislation as this goes down in flames due to “historical scrutiny” – the Colonial governments didn’t register folks arms, they didn’t issue licenses to own (it was assumed that men WOULD own a military equivalent firearm, and “firearm insurance cards”???.
The process of turning the only “Constitutional Carry” / ownership State to being a “Mommy Govt, may I hold onto even a scrap of my former Rights?” just like California. Emphasis mine and H.520 is here.
McClaughry: Gun registration, the first step
A Democrat legislator has proposed a bill requiring mandatory licensing, registration and insurance of firearms in Vermont.
H.520, introduced by Rep. Mike Mrowicki (Democrat of Putney), would require all firearms owners to have a license to possess a firearm and an insurance card indicating that the owner has firearms liability insurance. And it would require that each of the owner’s firearms be registered.
There’s nothing novel about this. The provisions of Mrowicki’s bill undoubtedly have wide acceptance among the gun control activists. This is probably known as the moderate gun control solution, the radical one being a ban on possession of firearms and their progressive confiscation, without compensation, like a harmful substance.
“Moderate,” he says. It shows you how far things have fallen. From my perspective, this is VT cutting in line to become just as gun-grabbing as CA, NY, IL, HI, and MA. Moderate is for Government to know where every gun is to be found? Has Mrowicki learned nothing from Illinois and Connecticut as to how their gun registration demands went? I’m betting that there would be a lot of “Sorry, I lost my hunting firearm up in the mountain somewhere after I shot my dinner” going around (the NH version is “I had a boating accident and it went overboard”).
The context is rather dreary for the VT old-timers who, if this passes, will pine for the “old days” before the Left carpet-baggers rolled in believing that instead of acclimating to VT, they’d turn VT into the hellholes they just left. Ronald Reagan is just shaking his head at them in disgust (“…what were you doing as they were taking our Freedom away, Grandpa?”).
This even as the number of Constitutional Carry States has now climbed to 27 – a majority with still a few more that are in the process to become such as well.
However, the larger problem is the Democrat thought processes. They, like all other current Democrats of note, believe that the guard rails of the Federal and State Constitutions are of no consequence to them (nor should they be of any import at all) either their ideological bent, the disregard for limited govt, and the relationship of govt vs citizens. From the VT Constitution:
Article 16. [Right to bear arms; standing armies; military power subordinate to civil]
That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and the State—and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power.
My layman’s eye doesn’t see any verbiage to the effect that a Citizen must now ask permission of the State to bear arms.
The saving grace in this is that as long as there are individuals or organizations left to challenge this attempted gun-grab in court, they will almost be likely to win. After all, in my studies of the Revolutionary time period, I have never come across anything of that time called a “firearms insurance policy”.
Steve posted that VT just made militias illegal (GraniteGrok, TNR). Now, VT Democrats are now trying to eliminate the tools that the VT militia used to win Vermont’s freedom from he Crown.