TRUMPING BERNIE: When it comes to gun rights, Vermonters may agree more with Donald Trump than with Bernie Sanders.
BURLINGTON, Vt. — Despite differences on some issues, when it comes to President Obama’s new gun control orders, Vermonters may be more like Donald Trump and less like Bernie Sanders.
Obama angered gun owners this week with new executive orders that bypass Congress and place burdens on American gun owners.
Among other things, the orders require private gun owners to become federally licensed dealers and undergo background checks when selling one or more firearms, even in informal settings.
The orders call for 230 additional FBI examiners to investigate sales, and they direct the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to determine which private sales constitute a personal gun business. Doctors get a prominent enforcement role as well, submitting people they deem mentally ill to the FBI’s criminal background check database.
Along with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, Trump wasted no time weighing in on the president’s action.
“They are not going to screw around with the Second Amendment. … It is not going to happen,” Trump said at Tuesday’s rally in New Hampshire, where he leads his closest Republican challenger by 13 points.
Monday, on CNN’s New Day talk show with Chris Cuomo, Trump warned that Americans soon “won’t be able to get guns.” In Mississippi over the weekend, Trump, speaking of Obama’s executive orders, pledged to “un-sign that so fast” if elected president.
Sanders took the opposite view. Appearing Monday on The Nightly Show with host Larry Wilmore, Vermont’s junior senator said, “I support, absolutely, what the president is doing. We’re not getting any cooperation from the Republicans.”
In Vermont, where guns are a way of life for Republicans and Democrats, Vermonters may side more with The Donald than with Bernie. Census data shows 42 percent of households have guns, and sportsmen’s groups estimate 70 percent of residents own guns. Distaste for gun control in a pro-gun state is likely to come up when Trump speaks Thursday night at the Flynn Center in Burlington.
Vermont gun dealers, while not overly concerned about the impact of Obama’s regulations, aren’t shy in speaking out against the president.
“The main result will be to further entangle normal people in the legal spiderweb that are U.S. firearms laws,” said Wesley Raney, chief operating officer of 802 Traders and SireArms, in Hartland. “It will have little to no effect on actual violent criminals or crime rates.”
Raney said the executive orders will turn ordinary citizens into felons, not stop mass shootings. “People selling firearms may unknowingly break laws with no intent and become felons, while actual violent felons obtain firearms outside of the system.”
Bobby Richards, owner of Crossfire Arms LLC, in Mt. Holly, said he didn’t think the president’s action would harm current dealers who already follow federal background check requirements. To the contrary, he thinks it will boost sales.
“Business has been incredible. President Obama is one of the best marketing tools for the firearms industry,” he said. “It’s a sort of poetic justice that every time he takes to the podium, you can pretty much guarantee gun sales are going to spike.”
Based on the number of background checks performed in 2015, more guns were sold in the past year than at any time in U.S. history. The FBI processed more than 23 million checks nationwide, while Vermont checks totaled 34,588, up from 31,502 a year ago. While not every check results in a sale, FBI checks are considered an accurate measure of firearm purchases.
Obama’s executive orders may be good for business, but some Vermonters say they establish a one-man legislative branch headed by the president of the United States — a fear seized upon by Trump.
“You have Republicans, you have Democrats, you have all these people that get elected to do this stuff. You’re supposed to get together and pass a law,” Trump told CNN’s Cuomo. “(Obama) doesn’t want to do that because it’s too much work. So he doesn’t want to work too hard — he wants to go back and play golf.”
The criticism resonates with Eddie Garcia, founder of the Vermont Citizens Defense League. Garcia, who stood with Vermont gun owners to help defeat Bloomberg-backed universal background check legislation last year, called Obama’s action an “example of executive overreach.”
“When Congress won’t give him what he wants, he stomps his foot petulantly and tries to figure out how he can skirt the law and the Constitution. That’s not acceptable. Were it up to me, I would at least introduce an article of impeachment if he attempts to implement gun control by executive order.”
Garcia doesn’t identify as a Republican, but he said he’s surprised when liberals respond to Obama’s use of power by saying people who follow orders have nothing to fear. “They sure as hell weren’t saying that when we found out about Bush’s illegal wiretaps. It’s hypocrisy writ large,” he said.
While Richards believes the orders will be struck down in the courts, he said he’s bothered by the politics of gun control.
“It’s political grandstanding. What I find personally offensive is that he continuously exploits victims of tragedies to further his administration’s agenda.”
Raney said the president’s ultimate goal is to stop legal gun ownership, not illegal gun ownership. “The federal government has demonstrated that it is more interested in making it harder for normal people to obtain firearms than it is in prosecuting criminals.”
Contact Bruce Parker at bparker@watchdog.org
