I felt like it was necessary to address the gun issue in regards to Bernie Sanders. There's been a lot of people jumping on this in the wake of yet another horrific shooting. The Anti Bernie crowd has tried to use some of his past votes to paint him as a gun nut. What they all seem to completely miss is any sort of context. First of all, if you want to understand his position on guns, you need to understand a little bit about Vermont politics, and life there in general.
Hunting is extremely popular, and important, in Vermont. It's necessary because of the fact that humans pushed out all of the wolves there long ago. Because of that, the deer population has, at times, grown exponentially. Since we expelled their only predator, it's up to us to make sure their population stays in check. Otherwise you end up with a population bottleneck, and that's a pretty awful scenario. So a large amount of people in Vermont have guns for hunting. They don't own them for "self defense", unless you count bears and moose. Yet despite a relatively high percentage of gun ownership, as well as pretty lax laws, there is a very low incidence of gun violence. According to numbers on Wikipedia, in 2010 Vermont had the lowest gun murder rate in the country, and was barely beat out by New Hampshire for the lowest rate of gun violence in the country.
Since Vermonters feel their hunting rifles are so important, there is pretty much no way to get elected in that state without being at least somewhat friendly to guns. Remember Howard Dean? Did you like him? Well, if he hadn't been endorsed by the NRA, you might never have heard of him. What about Sen. Pat Leahy? His voting record on guns is pretty similar to Bernie's. In fact, his NRA grade is a bit higher than Bernie's. So when it comes to liberal politicians from his home state, Bernie is right in line with other figures we have come to love.
But enough about state politics. Follow me below the pumpkin spice latte steam to see examples of when he voted for gun control.