“That kind of law [universal background checks] is something we should be discussing openly and thoughtfully. … It takes a lot to stand up and talk about this because there’s so much intimidation.” – GunSense Vermont’s Ann Braden in Guns: What makes sense today? [via stowetoday.com]

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72 COMMENTS

      • Um, no they haven’t… I just read all the comments, and saw the text box to add a new comment. Try again.

  3. “.. intimidation.”

    You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

    • That’s inconceivable, I think she knows exactly what it means, she desires to use government restrictions to intimidate others for disagreeing with her opinion.

      Kudos on that quote, haven’t seen that movie in a while

  4. What does a fat menopausal middle aged women know about “common sense” anything? Intimidation? LOL, Their always the ones blowing up over trivial shit at grocery stores/little league/PTA meetings…..

  5. We’ve had the sacred “Universal Background Checks” in Washington State for a few years since Mr. Bloomberg, et al, lied and shoved through a “voter initiative”.

    There has been ONE prosecution (and that was an add-on charge).

    Shootings in Seattle are increased.

    The Washington Arms Collectors no longer offers free Home Firearms Safety courses (we decided to curtail them because it involves actual handling of actual firearms and it would have required hundreds of background checks for each class).

    Excellent work…….

  6. B.S. authoritarian shill…Apparently you need to spell it out for the hysterical soccer MOMS, BI -Polar nutjobs, and the Libtard schizophrenics! “WHAT PART OF THE 2nd AMENDMENT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND !!! Shall NOT BE INFRINGED !!! ” WHAT PART OF DUE PROCESS DO YOU HAVE TROUBLE COMPREHENDING !!! How about go F%~%~self totalitarian wench !!!! Intimidation !?! There is NO COMPROMISE Regarding THE US CONSTITUTIONAL-BILL OF RIGHTS !!!!

  7. The single point the UBC people seem to be making, it isn’t safe for a woman to live with an abuser. Universal background checks will not change that!

  8. My guess is that Ms Braden is a educator socialist import from the other local anti-gun people’s republics in New England/New York, and the people in her organization are SJWs from the same places. Like ex-Californians, they try to replicate the anti-gun laws of their former state of residence wherever they might move to. They need to be driven out.

    • I believe they call it Stockholm Syndrome.
      People who have been oppressed for so long can’t handle the stress of actual freedom, they NEED to be told what to do, and they vote accordingly at the polls.

  9. Yet another busy-body from points south doing her best to screw over a Northern New England state.

  10. Look at the gun violence statistics for VT. Or lack of gun violence. These people have proven once again gun laws have zero to do with actual safety or saving lives.

    Delusional people.

  11. Every law on the books, and every one they propose to add, is a threat. It is a threat of state violence. Just because you’re enlisting other people to do your dirty work for you, doesn’t mean that what you’re doing doesn’t boil down to threatening people with very real violence should they fail to jump when you say “Simon says”. My sympathy for such people who want to complain about intimidation is everything it ought to be.

  12. She proposes to destroy my civil and human rights on a whim and she gets upset that I may not be happy about it?

  13. “On one side are the critics of gun violence; on the other ….”

    Ayup, nothing biased in introducing the discussion with that false dichotomy. 2nd Amendment supporters are all for gun violence….

  14. Yes trying to exercise your god given rights when people are trying to put you and your family in danger by making those god given rights against the law and enforceable by kicking your door in is pretty intimidating.

    If you find it hard to stand up for your fascist tyranny then sit down and shut up.

  15. Mom = A woman who allowed a man to knock her up. The word “Mom” in no way implies intelligence, knowledge, common sense, courage, work ethic, stupidity, ignorance or any other trait.

  16. The more I see FLAME DELETED the more I want to start rolling off entire arsenals of guns off the books. The only good way to deal with statist filth like her is to take the decision to regulate out of her hands by making it impossible to regulate the 2A.

  17. Braden wants to “balance out the Second Amendment so everyone’s constitutional rights are protected, as long as they’re law-abiding citizens.”
    So if your not “law-abiding” then it’s OK to violate all of your constitutional rights? or just some of them?
    Seems like there are VT laws already in place that prevent individuals who can’t pass an FBI background check from purchasing a gun….
    Seems like she is trying to make it more onerous for “law-abiding” citizens to possess a gun, or one step closer to banning guns entirely….

  18. People that can’t control their emotions trying to control other people’s behavior… rinse and repeat.

  19. Hey, the FSM (fake stream media) has told us for years that 95% of everyone support universal background checks, so clearly this chick needs a mental health evaluation…

    For the children.

    • Evil is always nervous in the presence of righteousness. Losers in the presence of winners. Those who begin to see how flawed their possition is in the presence of stalwart conviction and better ideas.

  22. She looks like the type that stands on my porch now and then with some bible thumping pamphlet shit banging on my door which I never open because I’m standing there looking at them on the security monitor or though my mirrored out front window.

  23. “discussing openly and thoughtfully”

    What is “things anti-gunners are incapable of”, Alex?

  26. I’m pretty sure most “GunSense” Moms would be intimidated by an aggressive butterfly…

  27. They push for universal background checks, which require a state ID, but are against needing an ID to vote because it discriminates against minorities. Where’s sweating guy looking at buttons when you need him?

  28. She had better get her children educated in the use of firearms. This century is likely to be the bloodiest ever, given all the race/class hate and anger generated by politicians like Obama.

  29. UBCs are ineffective security theater. Politicians, statists, and other authoritatian totalitarian individuals, either actually think this stuff is going to reduce crime/injury/death or want to disarm us and control our lives. I have tended to feel they have “progressed” to the latter than the former. In the former, their goal is to control immoral people and their immoral actions by means of sacrificing good people’s privacy and freedom. Rather than sole responsibility resting with the immoral people performing immoral actions, they offset blame by assigning that blame to good free people just seeking to buy and sell as they please and then label those people “enablers.” The hatred of gun owners here is just obvious. They blame the common law abiding man who seeks no ill and has no malice, and they blame him for selling his gun to a stranger. They see him as part of the problem. And that freedom to them – worth sacrificing. And this is what it’s about. Redistribution of blame and more and more control. Address the culture and moral degradation of culture that murders people? Nope. Instead place the responsibility of their future criminal action on a decent gun owner today. And in the meantime, begin gathering a list of every gun owner who buys and sells a gun. Quite simply, you can’t enforce this law unless you have this list. And this idea addresses the latter concept above – control of our lives. Less about crime – and more about control.

    • Robert Heinlein put it more succinctly: In a mature society, civil servant is semantically equivalent to civil master.

  30. So now dissent against useless laws = intimidation.

    I’m not surprised, after all, not voting for crooked leftist hacks makes one “deplorable” and disagreeing with the left makes one “racist”.

    They say that resorting to ad hominem attacks means you’ve lost the argument.

    ***that moment when we realized WE won!!!***

    😀

  31. Maybe you should feel intimidated when you’re trying to take away other people’s rights.

  32. I love the faith in a background check law or system the she thinks will protect her from evil. Now just find a way to round up the criminals with it and we are all set!

  33. I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that if you tried to reintroduce Jim Crow or the Nuremberg Laws, there’d be a bit of “pushback” as well.

  37. “It takes a lot to stand up and talk about this because there’s so much intimidation.” It’s nice that she made herself the hero of a fairy tale. “Look at how brave I am!” Pathetic.

  38. “so much intimidation” = so much evidence against it and so many people willing to talk about that evidence.

  39. If you bother to read the original article at Stowetoday.com you will see the gun shop owner interviewed was lying between his teeth in just about everything he said. He claimed that at a gun show every gun had to go through a back ground check. Not true. There is only a check if the gun is being sold by a dealer (and also if he obeys the law on second hand guns being sold). Private sales are not regulated by Vermont therefore no background checks which is what Ann Braden wanted and the Gun dealer claimed was already being done which again was a bold face lie.

    Whether you support Braden or not lets get the facts right about Vermont and gun sales on both new and used guns with a dealer or with a private sale.

    The real facts are the Brady Bill has vetted new guns now for several decades and it was never designed to ban guns and never has banned guns. Branden wants the Brady Bill to cover all gun sales to keep used guns out of criminal hands just as the Brady Bill has stopped thousands of such sales on new guns to criminals but it can do nothing to stop the same crook from simply buying a second hand gun when he gets stopped from buying a new gun.

    In this case she is 100 per cent right but other provisions such as mandatory use of safes to keep guns locked up would cut way down on the amount of stolen guns as well as preventing the 20,000 shootings of kids last year as reported by MSNBC News just last night. No not all the children died but many were maimed for life and most had painful operations and long painful and expensive recoveries and medical bills in the tens of thousands of dollars.

    Security Alarm systems mandatory would also cut way down on stolen guns as well further reducing the plethora of guns available to criminals. Its like being in a candy store. The average crook and lunatic no matter where he lives simply goes out and buys a used gun or stolen gun and then lays waste to the country side.

    None of the above laws (like the original Brady Bill) are designed to take guns away or prevent a law abiding citizen from purchasing a gun which has been proven for decades with the Brady Bill despite Right Wing Fanatics that claimed the Brady Bill was going to end gun ownership overnight. That was decades ago so what in the world are the Right Wing Ignorant and disingenuous Fanatics arguing about.

    • Mandatory safes and security systems? Might as well just come straight and say “No guns for poor people.”

    • I agree that safes are a great idea, and if everyone had a safe and a security system we’d all be better off. But both mandatory safes and security systems not only put a price barrier, but also limit ownership among renters, and still are unenforceable at least until the gun is stolen or an accident happens.

      Owning a gun winds up being a large responsibility. They’re highly sought after, often quite valuable, and have the potential to be extremely dangerous; one ought to lock it up when it is not in use. That said, we don’t need to make a law for everything that is a good idea.

      With regards to background checks, living in Washington, having gone through a year of I-594, mandatory background checks at every transfer seems a bit overboard and adds cost that may push transfers into illegal territory. Only one person has been busted over it, so far.

      Instead, the law should be, it is illegal to sell to prohibited persons, here are ways to check for prohibited status for a minimal fee, you need to keep a record of a transfer for x-years, where x-years is the statute of limitations on having sold a firearm to a prohibited person. That way, you’re not enticing illegal gun sales, you’re simply making a law that extends exactly as far as it can be enforced. Bill and Ted can still readily trade guns as long as they trust the other is not prohibited, and shady internet sales would still wind up going through a background check for the seller’s peace of mind. That’s what seems like common sense, to me.

      • Quote——————I agree that safes are a great idea, and if everyone had a safe and a security system we’d all be better off. But both mandatory safes and security systems not only put a price barrier, but also limit ownership among renters, and still are unenforceable at least until the gun is stolen or an accident happens.—————–quote

        Not true at all. With todays advancements in security alarm systems more and more of them are wireless and I have never lived in any apartment that banned safes. The price also has come down dramatically over the years as well due to so much competition in the security alarm systems as well. Its a law that is long overdue and many other Nations have had this law for years even before wireless came into widespread use and it did dramatically reduce gun thefts in other countries.

        We are not necessary talking about requiring a person to have a 1/2 ton Diebold Bank Safe. It was reported 2 days ago that 20,000 children were shot with guns lying around the house here in the wild west of the U.S. Not all of them died but many were maimed for life and went through expensive, painful operation costing sometimes up to a million dollars. Its another reason we need mandatory use of safes. Any unattended gun should be locked up unless on a person for protection. I have seen digital safes that could be opened as fast as a trigger lock or a small desk safe as well. In other words there are many options that could be made legal not just one iron clade way to do it.

        The real key here would be a Federal Law covering all States. You can pass all the laws you want and they are all meaningless unless the law covers all the states in regards to vetting second hand gun sales.

    • She is not 100% correct — that’s absurd. 1) Studies show there are more guns sold illegally by licensed dealers than the so-called loophole; 2) Private sales are a constitutional right, and the real goal is not “gun-show loopholes” but all private sales, a very different thing; 3) Vermont marijuana registry participants cannot now buy guns, and they have no due process recourse to challenge that deprivation — unconstitutional, and sure to be replicated under “universal” checks in areas such as treatment for depression, anxiety, PTSD — all at the government’s unilateral discretion, all without due process. And this will discourage many with mental health struggles from seeking treatment; 4) what about a $45 fee on the transfer of a $100 gun? A bit of a constitutional burden, no? Let’s try a $100 fee and background check on every woman who desires an abortion and see how that goes over… it will save children’s lives.

      • Your grasping at straws when faced with the reality of hundreds of thousands of guns sold with no paperwork to anyone who wants one. You example of a $45 transfer fee is also Right Wing Paranoia Bull Shit as well. Transfer fees are competitive and in my state I can go just about anywhere and get one transferred for as little as $25.00. Its a small price to pay for keeping thousands of deadly weapons out of the hands of crooks and pscho’s. Its called being a responsible gun owner.

    • When is the last time you went to a gun show in VT? Every gun show I have been to they do not let guns leave the building without a NIC (Background)check. So don’t talk about a gun dealer lying. You are correct that private sales between 2 adults not requiring a background check. But if someone is a Felon they still cannot buy or possess a firearm. If they do they would be breaking the law. So by passing “Universal Background checks” you think criminals will be stopped from buying guns? You must not live in the real world. If a criminal wants a gun they will get it illegally which they would be doing if they bought a gun private sale. I have been in law enforcement for over 35 years, this type of law will only cause law abiding persons an added expense. Which gun sense wants in hopes of banning firearms. Criminals do not obey laws. If we enforce many of the laws we have in place it would go a long way to keeping guns out of Felons hands. I would also like to see mandatory sentences, put some teeth in the law and get the violent felons who commit crimes involving firearms locked up.

      • Sorry but there is no way you were ever in Law Enforcement let alone for 35 years and not learned how criminals and wacko’s get their guns. They get them from second hand sales because they get denied a purchase through the back ground check of the Brady Bill or they buy stolen weapons because the legal irresponsible gun owner never locked them up plus had a security alarm system. We need the Brady Bill to cover all gun sales Nationwide because passing such a law only in one state or a few states is meaningless. The states with lax laws funnel stolen guns and second hand guns into states that have tough laws. Every civilized nation in the world has such vetting laws and most all of them have laws demanding security safes and alarm systems. You can rant all you want but history proved you wrong decades ago. These systems work as has been proven over and over again in foreign nation after foreign nation and I have had gun owners in places like Germany tell me they are 100 per cent in agreement with them. None of the above laws (Like the Brady Bill) ever took away guns or prevented law abiding citizens from owning them. Simply extending the decades old Brady Bill to cover second hand sales is way long over due. The amount of weapons flowing into criminals hands and wacko’s hands would go down dramatically when people knew they would be in serious trouble if they did not sell their guns through a back ground check system. No law is 100 per cent perfect but to do nothing with all the mass murders we have in the U.S. along with last years 20,000 children being shot is absurd, immoral and totally obscene.

  40. There is a lot of irony of a bunch of anonymous doofuses ranting online, saying all sorts of foul, violent, and threatening crap in response to a person voicing her opinion despite feeling threatened. If you all are arguing from the position of being right, why can’t you state your point without likening her head to a “cabbage [that is] great for ballistic tests”, or calling for her “retroactive-abortion”? You only lend credibility to her point.

  42. HAHA! What intimidation? I was there at the state house during every event. All I saw was polite, respectful people. The news media was desperate to incite some kind of foul reaction from the good, law-abiding gun-owners there but couldn’t. Vermonters are too smart for Mr Bloomberg and we know about the millions of dollars he is pumping into his campaigns to push his will onto other people. Braden has said that once they get something through, that will be just the start. She has said they will be back for more. And they are putting bills in on all fronts. It’s called “death by a thousand cuts” and they will keep trying until they get their way. Tell me something, Braden: Since we defeated your Universal Background Checks scheme, how is it that you think that you will push the exact same agenda again the next year and every year thereafter and expect a different outcome? Vermont has spoken.

  43. Intimidated? Oh, please.

    Here in Vermont, although it’s one of the most gun ownership friendly states in the country (estimated that over 70% of the population has at least one firearm in the home…over 50% has more), it is the safest, according to FBI statistics; at least one of the top 3 safest, depending on the year. She’s frantic because Vermont is a gun grabber’s inconvenient truth: so many firearms, so little violence. Extremely gun-friendly despite it being so politically Left-leaning. Gun ownership is just part of the culture of the state. Vermont is the originator of Constitutional Carry (aka Vermont Carry), which works so well that more and more states are adopting it.

    But it doesn’t matter if anyone is armed. Vermonters are some of the most incredible and decent people anywhere. Honestly kind. No one would harm her in any way. Vermont is such a gun-friendly state that chances are she’s constantly surrounded by at least one or more people conceal carrying…whether at the grocery store or anywhere else. And she knows this.

    Intimidated, my bottom. She’s so full of it.

    I live in Vermont and have attended events run by GunsenseVT. They’re a joke. The’re not discussions or forums or anything they tell you they are. They are attempts at gun ownership control propaganda. Audience questions are filtered (I’ve seen them make you write your questions on post cards that turn out to be coded so they know which ones not to answer) and only pre-screened audience members get their “questions” responded to.

    Eddie Cutler, president of Gun Owners of Vermont, has repeatedly offered to debate her on this topic over several years but she has backed away from the challenge. So much for dialog.

    GunsenseVT is a Michael Bloomberg-funded gun ownership control extremist organization. But despite well funding (check the Vermont Secretary of State website and follow the money) they have lost big time over and over and are getting desperate.

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