Fox 44 News last evening announced it will air a segement
on guns shows and the Barre F&G Club Gun Show will be
a part of this story. It will air at 10 PM, Monday.
The story could well say VT's gun laws are among the least
restrictive in the counrty. Not true, see rating in link below:
Do not be surprised to hear that VT is a major source of guns
used in crimes in other states. This is just not true, see numbers
from 2012 Boston Globe article below:
------------------------------
Boston.com and it's parent company the Boston Globe.
are not gun friendly publications. And, in this article the
premise and title line of the article are blatantly wrong.
But, it proves Vermont is not a gun source for Mass.
The largest single source state of the 1,020 traced guns
is Massachusetts, 351 guns. The "nearby states" had
250 guns. 133 came from Maine and 79 from NH. With
38 guns coming from all other "nearby states" combined.
That is 601 guns. Of the 1,020 guns traced, from what
state(s) did the other 419 guns originate? If not nearby,
it means far away states and certainly not Vermont.
See the issue? The article purports the "nearby states"
are the source of the guns used in Mass. crimes. But, of
the 1,020 guns traced, 351 are from Mass and 250 from
"nearby states." So, 419 of the 1,020 guns traced are not
from "nearby states."
ME, NH and VT combined make up less than 25% of Mass'
guns traced. If ALL of the 38 guns are "nearby states"
that did not come from NH or ME, came from Vermont, less
than 3.8% of the guns came from VT. Vermont is not the problem.
At over 35% Mass' guns well exceeded the combined "nearby states"
and other non-"nearby states" had over 40%. So, the article title is
clearly incorrect and the "nearby states" are not Mass.'s big problem.
Why would any responsible Vermonter falsely attack the good character of our state
by wrongly accusing us of causing violent crime in other states? How could any
Vermonter slander our good state, particularly since "Vermont" is a trademark for
what is of good quality and stands for honesty?
Mass. borders are no barrier to guns sold nearby
Guns used in Bay State crimes often originated in nearby states
Variation in guns laws from state to state may be complicating law
enforcement efforts, especially in regions such as New England, where
states are split between restrictive and largely hands-off approaches to
gun ownership, according to some gun law specialists and gun-control
advocates.
Authorities in Massachusetts, which has some of the toughest gun
laws in the nation, recovered 1,737 firearms used in crimes during 2011.
Of the 1,020 firearms that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms
traced to their state of origin, just 351originated in Massachusetts.
About 250 of the 1,020 guns traced came from nearby states with
less restrictive gun laws, including 133 from New Hampshire and 79 from
Maine.
The large percentage of guns used in crimes that originated in
other states carries troubling implications, said Jake Wark, a spokesman
for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.
“Clearly that has an effect on gun violence in Massachusetts, and especially in Boston,” he said.
The gun-tracing statistics back up calls for national gun-control
laws, said Brian Malte, director of legislation for the Brady Campaign
to Prevent Gun Violence. “Massachusetts gun laws are being undermined by
surrounding states with weak gun laws,” he said.
Questions about the state-by-state differences in gun laws are
getting new attention following the recent attack in a Colorado theater,
where a heavily armed man fatally shot 12 people at the midnight
opening of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
According to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which each
year ranks states based on the strength of their gun laws,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island all rank in the top 10 —
third, fourth, and ninth respectively. Vermont and Maine have what are
considered some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation — 46th
and 38th. New Hampshire is in the middle of the pack, ranking 24th.
The rankings are based on state laws addressing a host of
gun-related categories, including assault weapons, conceal-and-carry
permits, gun and ammunition sales, and high-volume magazines, said
Lindsay Nichols, staff attorney for the law center, which supports
tougher gun laws.
\The trend among states is toward fewer regulations on gun ownership, Nichols said.
“
Nationally, there is a movement to weaken gun laws,” Nichols said.
“The national gun lobby has put a lot of effort at chipping away at
state gun laws, and it’s affecting New England.”
Rather than tackle issues such as assault weapons bans and
conceal-and-carry laws, she said, gun lobbyists have worked to push a
number of smaller expansions of gun rights. She cited two laws passed
last year in Maine: one allowing the possession of guns in state parks
and at historic sites, and the other prohibiting employers from
restricting workers from storing guns in their vehicles in company
parking lots.
Page 2 of 2 --
But gun-rights advocates in New England say the recent legislation
in Maine is a step in the right direction. If Massachusetts were to
adopt gun laws similar to those in neighboring states, they argue, the
state would see a dip in crime.
“We don’t have any firearms problems up here,” said Ed Cutler,
legislative director of the Gun Owners of Vermont, who said the number
of guns leaving states with fewer gun restrictions, such as Vermont, is
“blown way out of proportion.”
Cutler said that in a state such as Vermont — where he estimates 75
percent of households own at least one gun — a potential mass murderer
would be stopped in a public place because bystanders might be armed.
“Vermont might have some of the most lax gun control in the
country. We’re also the safest state in the country,” he said. “We are
the safest state due to the large number of guns in this state.”
Laws in Massachusetts and Connecticut are unreasonably restrictive,
said Bennett Prescott a spokesman for the Connecticut Citizens Defense
League, a group that promotes gun ownership.
He said the impulse to enact more restrictive laws following a mass
murder is understandable, but he maintains that making gun ownership
more difficult is not the way to prevent such violence.
“Whenever there is a tragic event like this, there is always some
effort to say, ‘What can we do?’ or ‘What could we have done,’ ” he
said. “But there is nothing you can do to stop a madman.”
Gun-control advocates have highlighted reports that James Holmes,
the accused Colorado shooter, used an assault weapon that would have
been banned under a federal law that expired in 2004.
Those looking to cut gun violence, however, should look beyond
rifles, said Jack Levin, a criminology professor at Northeastern
University and co-director of its Center on Violence and Conflict.
“The gun problem in this country has little to do with the
prevalence of semiautomatics,” Levin said. “There are 15,000
single-victim murders in the United States every year, about two-thirds
of which are committed with firearms. The overwhelming majority of these
homicides are committed with handguns.”
Advocates on both sides of the gun-control debate agree that bans
on assault weapons fail to eradicate high-powered guns from a state,
especially with the rise in weapon sales on the Internet and at gun
shows.
“Even in states with the strongest gun laws, there are still loopholes that need to be filled,” Nichols said.
One example, she said, was that Massachusetts does not require
background checks at the point of purchase. Instead, once residents are
granted a firearm permit, they may buy as many guns and as much
ammunition as they like without undergoing further checks until that
permit expires.
Meanwhile, gun manufacturers continue to alter weapons to exploit
loopholes in state gun-control legislation, said Todd McGhee, who served
as a Massachusetts State Police officer before founding Protecting the
Homeland Innovations, a counterterrorismtraining firm.
“Overlegislating a particular topic is not going to keep our public
safer,” McGhee said. “We need to spend more time focusing on the
behavior of the individual people purchasing a firearm.”
Wesley Lowery can be reached at wesley.lowery@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @WesleyLowery. Adam Sege can be reached at adam.sege@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @AdamSege.
© Copyright 2012 Globe Newspaper Company
