Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.comMaybe not in so many words. But the Lamoille Valley Fish and Game Club are making their displeasure with the city known and they’ve declared all members of the Burlington PD persona non grata. The casus belli: the Burlington city counsel’s attempt to enact a local “assault weapons” ban. “’We have members in Burlington as well as members of our club that are going to be passing through Burlington and this would directly affect them and we felt that a prejudicial vote like that was going to be non-supportive of our club and being non-supportive of our club makes it very difficult to support Burlington City,’ the club’s chairman Bob Boivin said.” According to foxnews.com, that’s gonna put a crimp in the BPD’s training regimen . . .
And the boys in blue aren’t happy about it.
In response, the Burlington Police Department released a statement saying: “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.”
City council president Joan Shannon says the buck stops here in Montpelier and D.C.
“Ultimately, I don’t think that the best way to assert control over guns is at the local level,” conceded Joan Shannon, president of the Burlington City Council. “But here in Burlington, I think we felt the need to act because we didn’t see action coming from either the state level or the federal level.”
But the club doesn’t want to see Vermont — a constitutional carry state — become a patchwork of unmanageable local restrictions for gun owners to navigate. And the Burlington proposal would be the first step on that slippery slope.
“If you’re going to a shoot, say in one end of Vermont to the other, you have to check the laws for every town in between, and you will pass through a half a dozen different towns, and that makes it almost impossible for someone to stay as a legal gun owner, and that’s what we’re concerned about,” he said.
Perhaps a preemption law at the state level would be the best resolution for all involved. Just a thought.