From TPM Reader EW …
In VT, during hunting season last fall, one saw pickups with gun racks on the side of the roads. Many of the trucks had Obama bumper stickers on them. So VT is different. It has no gun laws at all, yet it is way down the list in terms of gun deaths, but not near the bottom.
VT has a hunting season for mothers and daughters and fathers and sons. It also has a bow and arrow season. I suspect that we will get some gun legislation here as CT is too close to be ignored. Why is VT different? I suspect we don’t have a culture of resentment which fuels the gun culture, the tea party and the Republican party.
I trace it back to the first thing VT ever did – it banned slavery. It was a full democracy for all men from the very first. It, per capita, had the largest presence in the Civil War. My guess is that up here guns are as they are in Norway, Sweden and Finland. I don’t have a gun. I’m not a gun person, but this is not a divide between friends and neighbors.
