We won’t have exact numbers until next year, but Vermont had a significant number of homicides in 2023, many of them gun-related. Unless there is a late December holiday shoot-out, however, there will be fewer gun deaths in 2023 than in 2022. But Vermont didn’t get ‘safer.’
The State reported seven such deaths in 2021 and twenty in 2022. A 183% increase. This year, the number has climbed into the teens and should land at nearly double the 2021 total, but the year is not over and the State Police have not revealed their body count to date, but a majority of this crime is occurring in (you guessed it) Burlington.
“Vermont is experiencing many drug-related issues. Fentanyl is a huge problem for this state and the country, for that matter,” said Birmingham. “Our overdose death rate is climbing every year, which is a problem and something that should be on everybody’s radar.”
Statewide, Vermont’s homicide rate last year was about 3.9 per 100,000, compared with Los Angeles at 3.1 and New York City at 2.3 per 100,000, Loan said. Burlington’s rate was 11.2 per 100,000, exceeding the rates in Philadelphia, Phoenix and Springfield, Massachusetts, according to Loan.
Culture and Crime
Democrat’s open borders policy combined with Vermont as a sanctuary state has shifted Burlington’s demographics. The city allows illegals to vote in municipal elections, while the city council fell all over itself in a rush to defund the police in 2020. They’ve “legalized” prostitution (it’s not legal, but you can’t prosecute it). The state and city engage in corrosive tax policy, anti-liberty agendas, and more onerous anti-gun laws. Increased spending. Decreased value.
You don’t need to be an expert on public policy, a fan of studying history, or even intellectually agile to understand how these policies evolve on the ground, in the real world. You get Burlington, which is on its way to being a tiny Vermont version of places like Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, and DC.
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Like its bigger Democrat-run brethren, it will forever struggle with drugs, crime, and violence. And you’d be right to think they knew what was coming because both the city and the State will use this predictable byproduct of their priorities as the reason to make matters worse. Budgets will continue to burst as services and safety decline. Schools turn out imbeciles who can barely read, which they will blame on white privilege, which is only overcome with fertility-destroying puberty blockers, cutting off sex parts, or burning down minority businesses in the name of minority rights. Probably all three.
Vermont Democrats will build on the success of 2023 (twice the gun deaths of 2021 but fewer than 2023) to impose more firearms restrictions, and like those other places I mentioned, assaults will rise (all types), more guns will be fired, and more people will be robbed, burgled, injured or die. More property will be stolen or damaged. Businesses will flee. Taxes will rise. Education outcomes will decline further.
None of this is difficult to predict, but the progressives will continue down the same path as if, this time, they’ll arrive at a different outcome but never do.
The only people who can slow or stop that decline are voters who, in the upcoming election (at least in Burlington), get to choose between a socialist and a Democrat socialist as their next mayor. Does anyone believe that will make things better for the citizens? Ideologically disabled democrats will and then act surprised when matters get worse, but no one else should be surprised.