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Shooting Range No Longer Welcomes Burlington Police
Gotta Love Vermont sometimes. Yes, we are the People's Democratic Soviet Socialist Republic of Vermont from time to time. Okay, most of the time. But not all the time.
From WPTZ via NBC.com:
A shooting range in Morrisville, Vt. is no longer letting Burlington Police officers train there.
The Lamoille Valley Fish and Game Club voted on the issue, saying it can no longer support a city that is threatening Constitutional freedoms.
More action such as this is exactly what needs to happen. If I were in LVFG at this juncture I would take copious notes regarding ANY interaction with Lamoille County or Morrisville or Burlington officials, especially law enforcement. If anything at all is not entirely proper and legal, I would begin building a case for harassment to go to the State's Attorney. Because I don't trust Law Enforcement that represents a city that legislates to infringe on my Constitutional liberties any more than I trust the city officials that do so.
This pathetic rejoinder from the Deputy Police Chief:
"It is unfortunate that this important and much-needed community dialogue regarding gun control currently under way in the city of Burlington and across the nation has resulted in this action," writes Deputy Chief Andy Higbee.
Much-needed dialogue? Is that the part where the City Council infringes upon the rights of legal gun owners in some idiotic gesture of sympathy because of the acts of an evil man? THAT dialogue? You reap what you sow, buddy. It is very fortunate that the arbitrary, capricious, misguided, unconstitutional action of the Burlington City Council resulted in Burlington PD getting the heave-ho. Your City Council is comprised of jackasses, Deputy. That you call the Obama gun-grab "needed dialogue" makes you a bit of one, too.
I have seen how Burlington cops shoot. You better forward your mail to Ethan Allan range. And if I didn't live a hundred miles away, and belong to three other ranges already, I would join LVFG in an instant.
Author XBradTC2Posted on January 17, 2013 Categories guns, Humor, obama, Politics
25 thoughts on "Shooting Range No Longer Welcomes Burlington Police"
mushdogs says:
Don't hold back. Tell us how you really feel. LOL.
ultimaratioregis says:
Too subtle?
Check this out- an exchange at the city council meeting in the town xbrad and I grew up in re: 2nd Amendment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxHnCei4wzg&sns=em
Jeff Gauch says:
The dialoge on guns needs to go like this:
"leI am a free and soverign man, capable of creating and acquiring property of my choice and entitled by my extistence to protect that existence and property with whatever tools I choose. As long as I pose no harm to another I will do as I see fit, and the only legitimate hinderance another person can put on my actions is to stop me from harming another or attempting to convince me that my chosen course of action is undesireab."
The dialoge part is where the other side shuts up.
Not bad, Jeff. You forgot the "the right to keep and bear arms is the last redress against the tyranny of government, which is now being infringed upon by that very government"
The only thing you can force a free man to do is die. I tend to ignore people who try and tell me to do stupid things, which means that they either have to let me do as I will or use force against me, in which case the protecting my existence clause comes into play.
Of course never let it be said that I'm afraid to be the first to resort to violence.
LT Rusty says:
Jeff-
If the application of force didn't solve your problem, then you simply didn't apply enough force.
Good old Maxim #6. I'm also a big fan of #34 and #37
http://schlockmercenary.wikia.com/wiki/The_Seventy_Maxims_of_Maximally_Effective_Mercenaries
DutchmanSimon says:
I have been following this blog for a couple of years now, and I really like it. I am from the Netherlands (Holland for you U.S. folks :D) and I am a bit confused over your "gun control issues".
I will try to explain:
What I don't understand is that the Americans can easily give up HUGE amounts of freedom when it comes to things like the Patriot Act, but when their government wants to limit the capabilities of the guns in their streets, that causes an enormous uproar!
In Europe we have really strict gun control measures. In my country if you want to get a gun you have to prove that your mental health is ok, you don't have a criminal past, and by following courses you prove that you know how to safely handle a weapon.
If you buy a gun, you have to store it in a vault and store the ammunition separately. The police will do periodic checks to see if you store your gun responsibly and follow the rules, if not you will lose your license.
One of the arguments I can not refute is the statistics of killings in the US vs. Europe. The differences are HUGE!
Then another question: Do the Americans really distrust their government to the point that they think they need to prepare themselves for the moment they need to take up arms against their own government? Really?!
Can you guys please help me shed some light on these issues?
First off, I think the threat to freedom represented by the Patriot Act is grossly overblown. Its primary threat is to privacy, especially the wiretapping provisions. The Patriot Act simply doesn't do much to curtail the average American's action, hence the lack of furor. Gun control, on the other hand, directly limits the freedom of the people. There are a lot of gun owners in this country, and even more who like the idea of being able to buy a gun, even if they won't ever actually do it. Gun control, especially gun control based on idiotic parameters like cosmetic features and arbitrary magazine limits (the Assault Weapons Ban did absolutely nothing to limit the capabilities of guns on the street or to reduce rates of gun violence) pisses all of them off.
You should be careful about the statistics quoted by advocacy groups. As Mark Twain observed, there are three types of untruth: lies, damned lies, and statistics. I don't think most Europeans understand how large and diverse the US is. The distance from New York to Los Angeles is about the same as the distance from Lisbon to Moscow, and we have an entire class of people (mainly in the entertainment industry) who routinely make that trip. We also have incredible diversity in pretty much eveery aspect of our culture, including violence. If you look at rates of violent crime the US consists of large swaths that are about as violent as Switzerland with isolated islands (ironically, generally areas with stringent gun control) where the violence rates approach third-world levels. Then there's the issue of violence other than gun violence. Generally countries that enact gun bans see a drop in gun violence, but a sharp rise in other violent crimes.
"Do the Americans really distrust their government to the point that they think they need to prepare themselves for the moment they need to take up arms against their own government? Really?!"
Long answer: You have to realize that in 1775 the people in the colonies thought of themselves as British subjects, and as such entitled to certain rights. The British had just fought a civil war a century before to preserve and solidify those rights, which trace back to the Anglo-Saxons. Now they had a King from a German familty, whose grandfather never learned English, who was attempting to deprive them of those rights. Over and over again their appeals were ignored (I'm pretty sure if each colony had been permitted to send a handful of representatives to Parliament we would still be loyal subjects of the Crown) so as a last resort we rebelled. Why wouldn't we think our government would turn against us and our rights? It happened to us before, and since then it's happened to plenty of other people. The point of the 2nd Amendment isn't to provide us with the means to violently overthrow a tyrannical government, its to ensure a tyrannical government can never form. With over 300 milion legal guns in this country there is no way we can suffer the same fate as the Jews of Germany, the Russians, the Chinese, the Tibetans, the landowners of Zimbabwe, or the Cambodians
Quartermaster says:
Jeff, I think we do have reason to worry about the misnamed Patriot Act. The hit to privacy is a serious problem when it comes to tyranny. It's an incredibly bad law, and unconstitutional on its face.
scottthebadger says:
Well, speaking as an LEO, as long as you behave yourself, and don't break any laws, I DON'T CARE what sort of gun you own, nor the magazine capacity. The people that I have to be concerned about are not going to follow the laws anyway.
Simon, the Founders of our Government did not trust Government, hence the provision of the 2nd Amendment, to allow the people to remove the Government by force, if necessary. The US is only #28 in firearms killings, and we have a much, much lower incidence of violent attacks on citizens than the UK, with it's draconian firearms laws. The majority of firearms deaths are gang on gang killings in large cities. This is actually a very safe country.
In regards the police supervision of your weapons in Holland, again, speaking as a police officer, I must state, that until you break the law, it's none of my business what sort of firearm you own.
ohengineer says:
I don't care about magazine capacity. To me, happiness is a belt fed weapon.
What makes Badgers happy is 16″/50 barrels, and 100 pound bagged charges, loaded six at a time, mounted in groups of 9, and if you throw in 20 5″/38s , 20 quad Bofors, and 50 Oerlikons, that's OK, too. Badgers are open minded about things like that.
URR, I are a Sheriff's deputy, does Vermont have Sheriff's with patrol Divisions, or are the just runners of the jails?
Sheriff's Departments in New England usually run the prisons, with a small cadre of deputies. We have next to no county government of any kind in the New England states, Vermont included.
Is becoming a Deppity the reason you moved?
Scotthebadger, thanks for the response, sounds all reasonable.
I found some stats on gun violence:
% of homicides by firearm: 6.6
Number of homicides by firearm: 41
Homicide by firearm rate per 100,000 pop.: 0.07
Rank by rate of ownership: 88
Average firearms per 100 people: 6.2
Average total all civilian firearms: 3,400,000
% of homicides by firearm: 60
Number of homicides by firearm: 9,146
Rank by rate of ownership: 1
Average firearms per 100 people: 88.8
Average total all civilian firearms: 270,000,000
Source: "http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/jul/22/gun-homicides-ownership-world-list"
In Holland we have a saying that roughly translates to: "that's filling a pit only after the calf drowns in it". I mean, why would you be interested in prosecution and not prevention?
As for the historical reason for having guns, I do also follow your reasoning. However, I think "It has always been like that so don't change it" is a very bad reason in itself. Cars didn't have seat belts, airbags, speed limits etc. There used to be a time when the Judge, Jury and Executioner were the same person…..
Let's be honest, even if you would like to remove the government, you wouldn't be able to.
Far be it from me to judge on your right to govern yourself, but here on the other side of the ocean we get lots of media coverage which suggest that the majority of your pro-gun people are, lets say it nicely, slightly less blessed with brains at birth. Lost of arguments we hear in the media are painted as: "Look at the idiotic reasons those idiots/ redneck's are using to defend the possibility to kill their own neighbor."
Thanks for discussing this with me so I have a clearer picture of the situation and not only (mainly) one sided media coverage.
I don't have the statistics offhand, but if you take the US figures you present, and remove Chicago, Washington DC, and Los Angeles, places where state and local laws make legal gun ownership almost impossible yet yield astronomically high murder rates, the rest of the nation is very similar, if not below, the other nations you cite.
The state I reside in has a population of 628,000 people. A bit bigger than Washington DC and one quarter the size of Chicago. Number of firearms murders in 2012? Three. And we have virtually unlimited gun ownership and concealed carry rights. Chicago, where guns are illegal, had more than 500 murders by firearm in 2012. So which laws restricting legal ownership disarm criminals and gangs?
The Second Amendment is not just for personal protection. It is the last redress of a free people against the tyranny of government. Do we trust our government that little? As Jeff so eloquently states, yes we do. We trust ALL governments that little.
"Society in all its forms is a blessing; government, at best, is a necessary evil".
-Thomas Paine
David Navarre says:
UK statistics indicate that their draconian gun control has only reduced murder by firearm. It has had the opposite effect on murders overall, rapes, assaults and robberies.
That is, more people in the UK are murdered now than before gun control.
Gun control really began in 1968, escalating multiple times until handguns were banned in 1997. Prior to 1968, about 300-400 people were murdered each year from 1946-1968. That's under 7.5 per million. Murders rose while population fell in the first decade of gun control, hitting 559 in 1981 (11.5 per million, more than 50% higher). In 1991, 725 murders made a rate of 14.3 per million (not quite double the per gun control rate), In 2001, after the 1997 law, 850 people were murdered (16.2 per million), with the numbers staying high (over 750) until 2008/9. I don't know what changed in the latter half of that decade, but it wasn't a new gun control law. Last year, the 550 murders still provided a rate of almost 10 per million, still higher than the 6 or 7 per million of those bucolic pre-gun control years.
Gun control in the United Kingdom has actually increased the murder rate.
One thing that the European Press ignores, is that here in the US, the attitude here in Law Enforcement is, you get to have your weapons, until you prove that you can't be trusted with them. Your Police seem to be working under the thought that you cannot be trusted with a weapon, until you prove otherwise. Are you really comfortable with a system that treats you as a child, who cannot be trusted to to behave in an adult manner?
The Left likes to use mass shooting as a means of bringing emotion into a debate that they cannot win with facts. Last year, a total of 41 people were killed in the United States in mass shootings. We have a population of around 330 millions residents, both citizens, and resident aliens That means that one American in 8.04 million was a victim of a mass shooting.
In an average year, we lose 33,000 people to auto crashes, and additional 11,000 to drunk drivers, ( don't get me started on them, I loathe drunk drivers ). That gives us 44,000 road deaths each year. or one in 740,000 people. Yet, there is very little outrage about those deaths, most of which were very preventable. The call to "do something" in the press is driven by a political agenda, not by facts. In polls taken by the press themselves, over 90% of members of the press here in the US define them selves as Progressive Liberals. They have been working very hard to frame this issue in a manner favorable to the "Progressive" worldview, which is only natural, as the voice of the Left, they will be the the shapers of public opinion, which a position of great power. They see themselves as kingmakers. Probably the best job that they have done is in the framing of the violence problem as being one of guns, not one of the racist policies of the Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party has been the source of most of the racial troubles in this country. It was Democrats that supported slavery, and indeed, the Republican Party was formed here in Wisconsin, with the goal of ending slavery. After the Civil War, Southern Democrats formed the Ku Klux Klan to keep the newly freed blacks from exersising their freedom. Not surprisingly, one of the first things that the Democrats in the former slave states did was ban the ownership of guns by blacks. They also were the party that created the "Jim Crow" laws, that made it illlegal for blacks to be served in the same reataraunts, or ride in the same train cars as white people.
But the greatest coup on the part of the Democrats was the War On Poverty's explosion of the Welfare State. Under President Johnson, welfare programs became much, much more wide spread, and people were sent out into black neighborhoods to sign up residents, in a wealth redistribution program, rather than a help until you get back on your feet program, of limited time availabiity. One of the most unfortunate parts of the Federal funding of Welfare, was that the money would be cut off, if the family started earning over a certain amount, rather than a gradual weaning. This soon made it quite evident that the family would actually be better of financially without the father. Soon, a subculture existed, in which the males would leave after impregnating the females, as there was no incentive to stay. This gave us a generation of young males being raised without fathers, and not learning from their absent fathers how to be men.
We are now into our third generation of fatherless males in the black community, and they have become feral. This can be seen in the culture that they have created, the Hip-Hop culture celebrating violence, drug use, and the treating of women as mere sexual commodities.
This is actually propmoted by the Democratic Party, as by paying the bills, through welfare and other social programs, they releive the males of any consequences for thier sexual escapedes, and even more important to the Left, they turn the State into substitue husbands for the women. This gives them a lock on the vote in large urban areas, as the males, having no mores installed in them by fathers see the Democrats policies giving the seal of approval to their mode of life, and the females see the State as being the means of support for their families, and they will not vote to endanger that. "Black Leaders", such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton foment stress in the black communities, to gain both political power for themselves, and money skimmed off of Federal poverty programs. I know that this sounds rather far fetched., but please read these two articles , One from Chicago Magazine:
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/January-2012/Gangs-and-Politicians-An-Unholy-Alliance/
and one from The National Review:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337929/war-against-black-men-lee-habeeb?pg=1
Here in the US, the attempts by President Obama, and the Democratic leadership in Congress, have many Americans quite concerned, as they seem determined to destroy the Constitution. There have been calls in Congress to repeal the 1rst Amendment protection of Free Speech, which has actually been taken away on many university campuses, with restrictive speech codes. William Howard Taft was much prouder of having been Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court than he was of having been President. He once said, " We must afford the most protection to the speech that offends us most, as if that is banned, where will it stop"? I am a very strict Taftian on the 1rst Amendment., so the plans of Nancy Pelosi don't fly with me.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296704/keep-first-amendment-editors
You can see that we do have some things to be concerned with on the subject of our freedoms. If you wish to know more about the effects of the current political climate on our Constitution, I would reccomend listening to the radio program of Dr. Mark Levin, and Constitutional Lawyer out of Virginia. You can listen to him online at http://www.marklevinshow.com But I must warn you, he does get worked up at times. I guess my rant has gone on long enough.
I have been a Deputy for 10 years, and have never been to a firearms related death. The Media in this country have long since given up on being unbiased. The Journalism schools of the universities in the US are, unfortunately, much like the Schools of Education in the same institutions. Both are considered to be easy degrees to obtain, so students who have spent the first two years of college slacking off and partying, when confronted with their Junior year, and the need to select a major, choose one of those two, and the partying can recommence. Very little is required or expected of them. Because of budget cuts at the county level has resulted in almost all of us becoming part timers, being a deputy doesn't pay so well, and must also work as a Night Auditor at a resort. Last December, I came in to work at the resort one night, and said to the college student working the desk, " It's December 7th, never forget". I then had to what explain happened at Pearl Harbor. She is going to the University of Wisconsin School of Education, so she can become a teacher.
Perhaps the biggest problem with our media, is that, in some manner, they have decided that they are the arbiters of what is Good, and that it is their duty to promote those beliefs and ideals, no matter what the facts are. Hence, you will find that politicians that are birds of a feather with the press get free passes, with their misdeeds ignored. Ted Kennedy, a senator from Massachusetts being perhaps the most egregious example. back in the 1960's he crashed a light plane, but his blood alcohol content was not revealed by the press. later, while drunk, he drove his car into a pond, and left his passenger, a young woman on his staff, Mary Jo Kopechne to drown. The press did not investigate farther than acknowledgement that the incident had, indeed, taken place.
The woman who currently holds his seat in the Senate lied about her background, claiming to be an American Indian. A blonde, Nordic American Indian. She also practiced Law out of her Harvard Law School office, without ever entering the Mass. State bar, which is illegal.
I just got a call, and have to go. I hope URR and or Brad or Quartermaster can finish this for me. If not, I will finish Friday night.
MikeD says:
I would challenge you to tell that to Moamar Quadaffi. Or Bashar Assad. Or Tsar Nicholas the Second. An armed populace has the potential to overthrow their government. Never fool yourself that because the government has tanks and planes and artillery and warships that the people stand no chance. Because the Air Force, and Navy, and Army all are made up of the people, not robots. yes, some would be loyal to the government, but most would cast their lot with the people. And having the populace armed means that they can fight long before they must steal weapons from the armed forces of their country.
SFC Dunlap (R) says:
I am always impressed with slivers of mostly overlooked history a.k.a. landowners in Zimbabwe, and anyone not from this country who truly wishes to find truth without much, if any of a pre-existing agenda. Approached evenly most will calmly and dispassionately explain a position, however what we (law abiding gun owners) usually get is "ambush" inquiries and thus are suspicious. By the way, it was Dutch Marines who made taking the Netherlands by Hitler no easy road….my compliments to that fine military asset.
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