2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
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This article looks at the situation caused by illegal drugs...the real driver of gun crime in this country...
Gunning for the Guns
I live in Vermont, where the gun control laws are among the most relaxed in the nation. Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the Senate and Mrs. Clinton used his votes on gun issues against him when they were competing for the Democratic nomination for president in various state primaries. Sanders's votes reflected (often) the feelings of his constituents. The older, more traditional elements of Vermont's population are pro-gun. They could not, in fact, imagine being anything else. People hunt. People own guns. It is a way of life. It may be hard to imagine Bernie Sanders taking a week off in November and going out to the deer camp with a bunch of his buddies to play cards, drink whiskey, tell lies, and maybe even shoot a deer. But if he isn't a hunter or a gun owner, Sanders understands and respects his constituents and does not dump them into a basket of "deplorables" because they own guns and care about guns, as their people have for a couple of centuries.
The long tradition of gun ownership in Vermont means that there are a lot of guns in the state. But there are very few gun crimes and almost no killings.
These have, however, been on the rise lately. But not because there are suddenly more guns or because AR-15s are flooding the state.
The rise in Vermont gun crimes can be traced to an epidemic of heroin addiction and trafficking.
In Vermont, more people are dying from heroin overdoses than from gunshots.
But, of course, the people who are bringing drugs into the state—from places far away—are armed.
Some of them may even be armed with AR-15s, the dreaded "assault rifles" of anti-gun imagination. Most, however, settle for a more easily concealed handgun.
They are armed, and their intentions are not pure. As there is more heroin, there is more need for ready cash and more robberies and break-ins. For years and years, we did not lock our doors at night. We might go for months unable to locate the front door key. That has changed.
Not long ago, a man was arrested a couple of hundred feet from the front door of the local elementary school. He was a heroin trafficker and engaged in the biggest deal the state had yet seen. The people who used his product—many of them—needed to find a way to pay for it, and this means stealing.
So there are more break-ins. Because Vermont is an essentially rural state, people cannot expect the response time for a 911 call to be prompt. It might take half an hour or more in the early hours of the morning. So if you hear someone downstairs, looking for goods that can be easily pawned, you can lock the bedroom door, make the call, pull the covers over your head and wait, passively, to see what happens. Will you hear the siren before you hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs?
Or, if you have a shotgun near the bed, and it is a pump action, like the Remington 870, you could work the slide and chamber a round and hope that this ominous sound will make the right impression on the junkie downstairs. If your weapon of choice is an AR-15, you can jack a round into the chamber, and this should have the same effect.
But, then again, maybe not. Maybe your visitor has the wrong address and thinks he has come to the home of a rival or a customer with whom he has some business dispute. He has come to settle it, one way or another.
Nobody invited heroin dealers into the state. And they don't seem inclined to leave. There are new busts reported every few days. When one is taken out, it seems another moves in. And if you want protection, you need to be prepared to provide it yourself, even if buying that gun and contributing to those record sales makes you . . . "deplorable."
Gunning for the Guns
I live in Vermont, where the gun control laws are among the most relaxed in the nation. Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the Senate and Mrs. Clinton used his votes on gun issues against him when they were competing for the Democratic nomination for president in various state primaries. Sanders's votes reflected (often) the feelings of his constituents. The older, more traditional elements of Vermont's population are pro-gun. They could not, in fact, imagine being anything else. People hunt. People own guns. It is a way of life. It may be hard to imagine Bernie Sanders taking a week off in November and going out to the deer camp with a bunch of his buddies to play cards, drink whiskey, tell lies, and maybe even shoot a deer. But if he isn't a hunter or a gun owner, Sanders understands and respects his constituents and does not dump them into a basket of "deplorables" because they own guns and care about guns, as their people have for a couple of centuries.
The long tradition of gun ownership in Vermont means that there are a lot of guns in the state. But there are very few gun crimes and almost no killings.
These have, however, been on the rise lately. But not because there are suddenly more guns or because AR-15s are flooding the state.
The rise in Vermont gun crimes can be traced to an epidemic of heroin addiction and trafficking.
In Vermont, more people are dying from heroin overdoses than from gunshots.
But, of course, the people who are bringing drugs into the state—from places far away—are armed.
Some of them may even be armed with AR-15s, the dreaded "assault rifles" of anti-gun imagination. Most, however, settle for a more easily concealed handgun.
They are armed, and their intentions are not pure. As there is more heroin, there is more need for ready cash and more robberies and break-ins. For years and years, we did not lock our doors at night. We might go for months unable to locate the front door key. That has changed.
Not long ago, a man was arrested a couple of hundred feet from the front door of the local elementary school. He was a heroin trafficker and engaged in the biggest deal the state had yet seen. The people who used his product—many of them—needed to find a way to pay for it, and this means stealing.
So there are more break-ins. Because Vermont is an essentially rural state, people cannot expect the response time for a 911 call to be prompt. It might take half an hour or more in the early hours of the morning. So if you hear someone downstairs, looking for goods that can be easily pawned, you can lock the bedroom door, make the call, pull the covers over your head and wait, passively, to see what happens. Will you hear the siren before you hear the sound of footsteps on the stairs?
Or, if you have a shotgun near the bed, and it is a pump action, like the Remington 870, you could work the slide and chamber a round and hope that this ominous sound will make the right impression on the junkie downstairs. If your weapon of choice is an AR-15, you can jack a round into the chamber, and this should have the same effect.
But, then again, maybe not. Maybe your visitor has the wrong address and thinks he has come to the home of a rival or a customer with whom he has some business dispute. He has come to settle it, one way or another.
Nobody invited heroin dealers into the state. And they don't seem inclined to leave. There are new busts reported every few days. When one is taken out, it seems another moves in. And if you want protection, you need to be prepared to provide it yourself, even if buying that gun and contributing to those record sales makes you . . . "deplorable."
