| Guns and Governance: Vermont's Gendered Issues of Freedom and Control | |||||
| by Rickey Gard Diamond | |||||
Gun control is a subject that brings into focus how women's issues are more accurately human ones, bound by gendered habits of mind, and well worth questioning. Women's courageous voices this past session at the State House have resulted in one new gun statute, called Act 14. It prohibits gun ownership for violent offenders and those judged dangerous because of mental illness. If it surprises you this didn't exist before, you should know the gun control conversation is far from over. As Ann Braden of Gun Sense Vermont told Vermont Woman, it will be important to show up in the coming year's session. At an event in preprimary August, organized by Senate Majority Leader Philip Baruth (D-Chittenden), all the Democratic candidates for governor and lieutenant governor showed new unity on the issue of gun control. Yet the crowd attending was only about 100. |
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For those who love and collect guns, Vermont is held up as an example of the peaceable good that comes with Second Amendment freedom, nationally valorized as "constitutional carry." No special permit is required to carry a concealed weapon in Vermont. Handguns need not be registered. Only guns sold in Vermont's 319 licensed gun shops need bother with the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Checks System, called NICS. (Since 1998 it has processed 225 million US gun purchases.) Private sales at gun shows or online are under no such constraint. Vermont's "open carry" tradition has been sacrosanct since the armed Green Mountain Boys. While the rest of the country urbanized throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Vermont remained stolidly rural and conservative. Southern states first imposed gun control laws to prevent slavery revolts and later to enforce Jim Crow. Western states enacted gun control to fence in frontier violence. Through it all, Vermont remained open carry and Republican. In 1903 a gun owner sued the city of Rutland for imposing a city gun ban; it went to Vermont's supreme court, which unanimously found the rule "repugnant." |
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Sanders responded that 99.9 percent of gun owners obeyed the law. He had wanted to protect the mom-and-pop gun shops of Vermont but would reconsider in the future. His reply felt damp in the context of a rain of shootings in the state and the nation. San Bernadino's terrorism, which resulted in record gun sales the summer before, was part of the storm and so was Orlando's record-breaking horror. So had been the Charleston church shooting and the death of Trayvon Martin, which galvanized the formation of Black Lives Matter. In July 2016 alone we witnessed film close-ups of police shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, followed by sniper Micah Xavier Johnson's killing five policemen, wounding seven other officers and two civilians. Responding was made more difficult, police later said, because others in the gathering also carried guns. Sander's claims about the 99.9 percent of legals seemed a bit too bucolic, even for Vermont. A national gun violence prevention organization, Everytown for Gun Safety, had in 2015 released an analysis of Vermont numbers from the FBI NICS. It showed denials since 1998 for licensed purchases had kept 279 guns out of the hands of drug offenders, 356 domestic violence offenders, and 983 sales to convicted felons.
From 2002 to 2013, however, NICS denials in Vermont fell by nearly half during the same period that opioid trafficking and domestic violence calls here increased. That suggested that prohibited felons and violent abusers were purchasing guns online. Guns are a currency in the drug world, drugs in/guns out, and there's evidence that Vermont serves as a New England hub for gun trafficking. The numbers appear small, and one statistic never tells the whole story, but the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) traces a fraction of guns used in criminal activity. Its most recent 2014 report reveals 224 Vermont guns used in crimes, mostly in New York, an increase from 147 guns traced the previous year. The director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research told The Wire in an e-mail that in raw numbers "Vermont is not a major contributor to NY's crime guns." But, on the other hand, "the very high per capita rate of guns exported from VT to NY criminals indicates that VT's gun laws do not work well for preventing the diversion of guns to criminals. This is consistent with research that we've conducted and the findings of other researchers as well." If San Bernardino shocked gun lovers into gun purchases, the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, shooting of 26, including 20 elementary school children, prompted a different action from a former Vermont social studies teacher, Ann Braden. She told Vermont Woman that she had looked for a place to volunteer but discovered no organization existed. She undertook a petition. So many Vermonters signed it, she decided to take it to the State House. "At the time, I thought that would do it. I was naïve," she admitted. Afterward, when Gun Sense Vermont formed out of that, "I became president," she added, with a laugh at the very idea. She says she has never been political before. The petition went nowhere fast in 2013. Sen. Phil Baruth (D-Chittenden) introduced a gun control bill but withdrew it after citizens packed the State House lawn, holding signs that said "Gun Control Means People Control" and "A Ban Disarms Only Lawful Citizens." A majority of the legislature and Governor Peter Shumlin agreed. Nothing needed to be done. Some who didn't agree lost their elections in 2014. "The defeat of Linda Waite-Simpson is a body blow to Gun Sensef Vermont," Eddie Garcia, founder of Vermont Citizens Defense, said in Vermont Watchdog. Evan Hughes of VTFSC agreed, along with the defeat of Progressive candidate Dean Corren to Republican Phil Scott. Garcia also worked to defeat Rep. Michelle Fay (D-St. Johnsbury) for not committing to vote against a Burlington charter change. The Sportsman Bill of Rights prohibits local gun rules. Rutland and Barre had tried earlier and been stopped by lawsuits. In 2000, Montpelier tried a charter change. The legislature said no. Burlington's most recent action sought to ban guns from bars and assault weapons and large capacity magazines within city limits. The legislature said no again to city control, but Burlington mayor Miro Weinberger continued the push into the latest 2016 session, fueled by a fatal shooting at the downtown Zen Lounge in late 2015. Rep. Mary Sullivan (D-Burlington) sponsored the same three measures in statute form in 2016, stating it was clearly the will of Burlington voters. To be fair, many legislators objected less to the motive of such efforts than the means. Statewide gun control measures, or better, federal ones, were preferable to piecemeal local solutions, they said. House Speaker Shap Smith (D-Morristown) was clear that a majority of the House was still not in favor, and he advised gun control sponsors to "play the long game." The trouble was that for a growing number of women who were finding their courage, guns were no game. For them, guns did not mean freedom; they meant threats and terrifying danger in their own homes and at work.
On August 7, 2015, a Thursday, Vermont guns and gun regulation came into sharper focus and sharper conflict. A state social worker Lara Sobel was shot to death just outside the Barre City Court House on Main Street. State's Attorney Scott Williams heard the gunfire and disarmed the shooter's .270-caliber, bolt-action Remington rifle. Police wouldn't learn until Saturday that three other women in nearby Berlin had been murdered by the same gun and allegedly by the same shooter, committing the kind of heinous mass gun crime that so many had feared. But this time the shooter had been a woman; it shocked the whole nation. The 2016 legislative session that Smith and Sullivan entered was overshadowed by all these events, adding urgency. Committee meetings and hearings were well attended, because more troubling reports had underlined Vermont's trouble with guns. The Vermont Department of Health reported that gun assaults are 12 times as likely to be fatal than other weapons or bodily force. Guns figure in more than two-thirds of all Vermont homicides and in more than half of all suicides. Ninety percent of all gun shot wound deaths are the result of suicide. Vermont's rate is 16.9 per 100,000, compared to a 12.6 national rate. Far more men take their own lives than do women in Vermont (157 to 41), and far more often, they use guns to do it (62 percent of the time). In September 2015, the state's Domestic Violence Fatality Review Commission had issued its report analyzing cases from 1994 to 2013: fully half of Vermont's 237 adult homicides in that period had been related to domestic violence; 56 percent were committed with firearms, as were 77 percent of domestic-violence-associated suicides. A national nonprofit, the Violence Policy Center, in a study of men murdering women ranked Vermont eighth in the nation for women-killing rates. |
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By the end of the session of 2016, Act 14 was signed into law bringing Vermont into line with federal laws that ban people convicted of violent crimes, including sexual assault and domestic violence, from owning firearms, as well as those involuntarily committed due to mental illness. Gun Sense Vermont counted it their first win. Act 14 was mild enough that the state's alpha conservative John McClaughry told The Trace, a national news source on guns, that he would have considered supporting it, had it not been put forward by Gun Sense. However, Windsor County state's attorney and a Vermont Law School faculty member, David Cahill, critiqued its mild measures: "Passage of Act 14 was progress," he said in an e-mail to Vermont Woman. "But, the punishment for violating ... is only misdemeanor level, and frankly that may not be sufficient to deter individuals previously convicted of felony offenses, such as heroin trafficking and aggravated domestic assault, from possessing a firearm." He thought Vermont should impose a felony-level penalty for violent offenders. That wouldn't be an expansion of gun control, he explained, but it would help police more effectively enforce keeping guns away from violent people. Barre police chief Tim Bombardier agreed, saying the Vermont statute ought to mirror the federal one. He also thought its mandate requiring reports on involuntary commitments important for future background checks. He thought these should be universal. This was not part of Act 14. A separate result came from 2016 State House gun efforts. A new program was created for gun shop owners. Sportsmen's clubs will host trainings in suicide prevention and have developed a poster to highlight symptoms, urging gun owners to "be a friend" to those struggling with problems like depression over a job loss or a relationship. "A lot of our members, they're terrified they're going to have their guns taken away." Eddie Cutler told The Guardian. Cutler is spokesman for Gun Owners of Vermont, whose website slogan is No Compromise! However, failing a background check on psychiatric grounds is rare. Since 1998, NICS has denied only 21,000 US gun purchasers because a judge declared them mentally unfit. |
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Domestic abusers are not suffering from any diagnosis of mental illness, one advocate was careful to emphasize; rather, their problem is a belief system that entitles them to control and intimidate their partners and their families. Guns are often part of this. Auburn Watersong, legislative liaison for the Vermont Network Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence, said: "I've heard so many stories from victims being threatened—guns are also a tool for manipulation and coercion." For Pamela Simmons the urgency for sensible gun control is as personal as it can get. A survivor of domestic violence, Simmons testified at the legislative hearing that resulted in Act 14, though she physically shook as she did it. A few Day-Glo-clad men had to be reprimanded for uncivil behavior during the hearing; and when Simmons made a trip to the restroom, others attempted to block her reentry to the room, taunting her. When she had finished testifying, one man pointed with two fingers toward his eyes, turning them to target hers in an unspoken: I see you. I have you in my sights. How had she found the courage to speak out against such threatening behavior? She told Vermont Woman what had brought her there. She was used to guns in the house for hunting, she said, but her partner used them to scare her, putting a gun to her head, playing Russian roulette. The night she knew she had to leave, he had laid out several guns on a table and explained how he could kill someone and bury them in the woods outback without anyone ever knowing it. She tried to leave. "He beat the living tar out of me," she said, describing a broken nose and a fractured occipital bone above her eye. She phoned the police from a gas station and made it to the local shelter, which she credits for turning her life around. When her case came up in court, she couldn't attend; she was too terrified. The state brought the case forward, she says, but her former partner still has his guns. |
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Watersong says such gun threats are not unusual but signal a dangerous escalation. She notes 13 states now have laws that mandate police confiscate guns at a domestic scene as violent as Simmons'. Five other states permit this at police discretion. Would a law like that work in Vermont? State's attorney David Cahill thinks police training to recognize the patterns of domestic violence would be the most helpful first step, "the most urgent component." But he added, "I agree that in many situations, waiting for the final Relief from Abuse order is too late, particularly if a pattern of escalating behavior has been ignored, or simply not recognized for what it is." The upcoming November 2016 election and next year's legislative session will put a bright spotlight on what sort of place gun-proud Vermont will become. Sue Minter hopes to serve as our second woman governor. At some risk, she is making gun control and its link to domestic violence one of her issues, contrasted with her opponent Phil Scott. He doesn't support universal background checks for private sales and claims more laws are not needed. The combination of the Barre shooter's female gender with her four women victims —her gendered exception to the rule for the right to wage violence and force—has shaken and unsettled norms well worth questioning. We expect male violence; we exalt it to resolve differences, be entertained, or appear larger than we are or feel. Almost half of domestic violence homicide victims are men, most often killed by men with guns; their suicides expand those numbers. They kill each other or themselves most often, but their murders put Vermont in the top women-killing states. For the first time, the latest report on Vermont's Domestic Violence homicides includes children. It shocks to learn that over the past 10 years, 41 children have witnessed the violent death of a parent, sometimes both, and others they love. Such violence and trauma will follow individuals in a family, a community, far into the future, reverberating for generations. The public conversation about guns and governance can hardly create freedom without confronting the trauma that echoes loudest in gunshots, whatever your gender. |
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Rickey Gard Diamond lives and writes in Montpelier, Vermont. The protagonist of her novel Second Sight is a woman hunter.
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