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.
In 94 he voted to ban semi-automatic assault riffles. In 98 he voted to increase sentencing for gun crimes. In 99 he voted to more narrowly define gun shows, and impose a three day waiting period for guns bought at said gun shows. In 06 he voted against prohibiting funds from being used to enforce trigger locks on guns. In 09 he voted against allowing concealed carry across state lines, and again in 13. In 13 he also voted against preventing the U.S. from entering the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, and for banning high capacity ammunition magazines, banning assault riffles, and listing all people prohibited buying a firearm in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. So to say that he is completely pro gun is not honest.
The criticisms I have seen seem to stem from his vote against the Brady Bill. I'll let the Politifact article comment on that:
According to Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ reason for opposing the Brady bill was two-fold. First, he believed implementing a national waiting period was federal overreach. And second, he was doing his job.There's also been a lot of attention paid to votes he made in 03 and 05 that prevents victims of gun violence from suing gun manufacturers. The narrative has been "he voted to keep Sandy Hook victims from being compensated by gun manufacturers". This is very misleading, considering the vote was years before that shooting happened, and the vote was not specifically about Sandy Hook victims. His response to criticism on that vote has been to use an analogy. Say you make baseball bats, a legal product. Then someone uses one of your bats to viciously attack someone. You sold a legal product, and intended for the buyer to use it in a legal manner. Should you be held liable?"He wasn't opposed to states having (waiting periods) if they wanted to. The Republicans wanted to repeal waiting periods in states that had them, and Bernie voted that down," Weaver said. "He said he would be against waiting periods, and he kept his word to the people of Vermont."
In April 1991, Sanders’ then-chief of staff Anthony Pollina echoed the idea that Sanders was simply representing the will of his constituents.
"Bernie’s response is that he doesn’t just represent liberals and progressives. He was sent to Washington to present all of Vermont," Pollina said. "It’s not inappropriate for a congressman to support a majority position, particularly on something Vermonters have been very clear about."
In the end, what all the Vermont politicians I listed earlier would say is "we have laws that work for our state, but we understand that they don't work for every place. We're just representing our people." And I, for one, would much rather have a President who will represent the will of the people, and let hunters have guns, than the multitudes of candidates who would be all too willing to send us to wars where there's a whole lot more gun violence.