Gun rights advocates in senator’s home state of Vermont are skeptical of candidate’s claim he can unite Americans on polarizing issue

Is a Democratic president from a gun-friendly state what America needs to tackle the polarized issue of gun violence?

Bernie Sanders argued that’s exactly what the US needs at the Democratic presidential debate on Thursday, in response to continued attacks from Hillary Clinton over his mixed voting record on gun control.

“In fact, because I come from a state which has virtually no gun control, I believe that I am the best qualified candidate to bring back together that consensus that is desperately needed in this country,” Sanders said.

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Some gun rights advocates in his home state are skeptical of how much balance on guns Bernie would show if he makes it to the White House, with one recalling that Sanders seemed “afraid” even to touch a high-capacity magazine.

Sanders “doesn’t really understand” firearms, said Eddie Cutler, the president of Gun Owners of Vermont. “I know he’s lived up here for quite a while, but it’s something he’s never really been into.”

Vermont has some of the most gun-friendly laws in the nation. The state’s “constitutional carry” approach – no permit required to carry a weapon in public – is a model for gun rights advocates nationwide. Guns & Ammo dubbed Vermont one of the “best states in the country for gun owners” in 2015, second only to Arizona.

Sanders’ voting record in Congress reflects these Vermont values, and Clinton has continued to hammer him for his support of a 2005 law that shields gun companies from lawsuits over criminal misuse of their products, and for his votes against the landmark 1993 Brady Bill, which established a national background check system for gun sales from licensed dealers.

In response, Sanders has touted his D-minus record from the National Rifle Association, and argued that he’s the best person to find middle ground in the gun debate.

“What we need as a nation is to get beyond all the shouting,” Sanders told MSNBC last fall. “You know, you got some people who want to ban every gun in America and some people believe nothing at all.

“I think the vast majority of the American people, as the president indicated, including gun owners – I know that’s true here in Vermont – want sensible gun control legislation.”

Over the past few months, Sanders has made conflicting statements on his support for the federal law that shields gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits when their products are misused by criminals. Under pressure from Clinton, he said he would support legislation to repeal the 2005 law, though he has continued to defend its central tenets in interviews.

At Thursday’s debate, he both raised concerns about local gun dealers being sued when criminals use their guns, and, in reference to a lawsuit against a dealer brought by families of school shooting victims from Newtown, Connecticut, said: “They have the right to sue, and I support them and anyone else who wants the right to sue.”

The Sanders campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Cutler was unequivocal with his criticism: “He’s been flip-flopping on this issue ever since he decided to run.”

In the 1990s, he recalled, Sanders visited a fish and game club in central Vermont where Cutler was the legislative director. Sanders had recently voted for the 1994 assault weapon ban, and Cutler hoped to educate him about what the weapon features targeted by the ban actually looked like.

To demonstrate what he saw as the futility of the ban on ammunition magazines that held more than 10 rounds, Cutler had taken a standard five-round magazine, added some sheet metal and soldering, and extended it into a 15-round magazine –the kind of “high-capacity magazine” the ban had targeted.

“I tried handing it to him. ‘Here’s how we made this.’ He just absolutely refused to touch it,” Cutler said. “I figured he was afraid of it.”

Cutler sees Clinton as more of a threat to gun rights than Sanders, since he believes she would support “complete disarmament of the American people”.

But he said he did not believe a President Sanders would help America reach a consensus on the gun debate. “We’re sure that anything that comes across his desk he will sign,” he said. “Hillary will seek out more gun control laws. He won’t seek it out, but he will sign them.”

Jon Sanborn, vice-president of R&L Archery, a firearms and sporting goods store in Barre, Vermont, said earlier this week that Sanders “does pretty well” when it comes to gun policy.



“He hasn’t gone quite as rabidly anti-gun as Hillary has,” he said.

The senator’s years in a state “with virtually no gun restrictions will feed to his sensibilities a little bit”, Sanborn said, when considering a Sanders presidency. But he said he was not sure how much that Vermont experience would matter once Sanders faced the pressures of gun politics on the national stage.

Evan Hughes, the vice-president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, the NRA’s state association, was more optimistic.

“I would say he would stake out a middle ground,” he said. “He would certainly bring people closer together than Hillary Clinton.”