Vermont gun rights proponents to convene at Yankee Sportsman’s Classic Show

ESSEX JUNCTION — The Expo Center in Essex Junction will be taken over by 15,000 pro-gun advocates, hunters and nature enthusiasts Friday through Sunday to celebrate Vermont’s cherished outdoor heritage at the 26th Annual Yankee Sportsman Classic Show.

Nearly 200 exhibitors will be in attendance and catering to a variety of interests, such as firearms, outdoor recreational vehicles, beekeeping, wilderness survival and more. The weekend will include seminars held by acclaimed wildlife experts with helpful tips and tricks for successful hunting and fishing.

Bruce Parker/TNR

GUN RIGHTS ACTIVISM: A display hung at a recent Yankee Sportsman Classic Show reveals that the annual expo attracts ardent supporters of gun rights in Vermont.

Kids are welcome to join the fun, too, with a wildlife petting farm, catch and release trout pond, archery and pellet gun shoot.

Frank Stanley, spokesman for the Yankee Sportsman Classic and a lobbyist for the Vermont ATV Sportsman’s Association, said hunting and fishing is part of Vermont’s roots and traditions.

“We want to promote the environment, habitat and love of wildlife to the kids,” Stanley said. “Being a sportsman and fisherman and being in that family is important. That’s why we work hard and continue to do this each year.”

Vermont relies on the $13 million in revenue that fish and game activity brings in annually, but a recent proposal to the Vermont Senate could possibly have a negative affect on revenue and those participating in outdoor sporting.

The universal background check law proposed to Senate, S.6, would require second-hand firearm sellers, like many at the expo, to run the names of the purchasers through a national database, closing a supposed “gun show loophole.”

Other proposals, including S.22, would allow law enforcement to confiscate someone’s firearm for up to a year if they are considered to be a “danger to others” in any kind of dispute.

Evan Hughes, vice president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, said these types of mandates, especially in Vermont, are “ineffective, intrusive and expensive.”

“There is a small contingent of legislators who are constantly pushing any kind of gun control item that they can identify,” Hughes said. “We have a fantastic gun safety record in Vermont, so what these folks are pursuing is a political problem that doesn’t exist.”

Hughes said many of these gun control proposals are modeled after New York City laws, which simply do not correlate with other cities or states for obvious reasons.

“They’re trying to pass into Vermont what exists in New York. If you compare the violent crime rate, Vermont is consistently the lowest violent crime rate state in the nation, per FBI statistics,” Hughes said.

He added that hunting is embedded in Vermont culture and is a crucial aspect of that way of life and mindless attempts at stricter gun control could threaten that.

“There are constant attacks on hunting in the state and it’s just going to be our folks protecting what’s theirs,” Hughes said.

Click here for schedules and admission information for the the 26th Annual Yankee Sportsman Classic Show.

Briana Bocelli is a freelance writer for True North Reports. She lives in the Northeast Kingdom and is a senior at Castleton University.

Images courtesy of WIkimedia Commons/West Midlands Police and Bruce Parker/TNR

2 thoughts on “Vermont gun rights proponents to convene at Yankee Sportsman’s Classic Show

  1. I thought I would let you know a fundamental element of the current perspective of the American people, since the Progressive Socialist members of the House and Senate seem to be inordinately thick-headed lately. Here it is:
    The American people have obeyed the last gun control law we will ever obey.
    We now know your game, and we aren’t playing it. Under our Constitution:

    The federal government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to legislate, enforce, or adjudicate laws pertaining to the exercise of our rights. Period.

    The federal government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to require government permission to exercise a right.

    The federal government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to compel us to waive our 4th Amendment guaranteed right to be secure from unwarranted interrogation, search, or seizure in the absence of probable cause of criminal conduct as a precondition to being allowed (or denied) to exercise our right to keep and bear arms. This happens every time we fill out BATFE form 4473 under penalty of perjury.
    .
    The federal government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to compel us to waive our 5th Amendment–guaranteed right to due process as a precondition to being allowed (or denied) to exercise our right to keep and bear arms. By forcing us to fill out BATFE form 4473 under duress.

    The federal government is not delegated the authority by our Constitution to compel us to waive our 10th Amendment right to a federal government exercising only those powers delegated to it by the United States Constitution, and State governments are prohibited the exercise of any power prohibited to the States by the United States Constitution.

    The federal government is not even delegated by our Constitution the authority to license firearm dealers or operate or fund the most powerful anti-rights government agency on the planet called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

    The purpose of compelled background checks as a precondition to allowing or denying the transfer of a firearm is to deceive firearm owners and prospective owners into unknowingly waiving their rights guaranteed by the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 10th Amendments so they will have no rights left to claim when the government decides to confiscate our firearms.

    The federal government has no authority delegated by the Constitution to deceive its citizens into waiving their rights or acquiescing to the loss of their rights by subterfuge, scam, fraud, or force. We will not comply with your color of law, and any attempt to confiscate our firearms will be viewed as an armed insurrection against the authority of the United States, which is exclusively the Constitution of the United States, in violation of 18USC2383 and associated statutes, and will be resisted.

    It was said best by Alexander Hamilton, “No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid”.

  2. Never give up your guns Vermont. Its all you have left after letting the Democrat/Communists run your state for so long

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