Republican governor of rural state OKs gun limits

MONTPELIER, Vt. — Vermont on Wednesday raised the age to buy firearms, banned high-capacity magazines and made it easier to take guns from people who pose a threat — the first significant gun ownership restrictions in state history, signed into law by the Republican governor.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for the largely rural state that traditionally has refused to impose restrictions on gun ownership.

Standing on the Statehouse steps, Gov. Phil Scott signed the three bills into law before a crowd of gun rights activists and supporters of gun control.

“This is not the time to do what’s easy, it’s time to do what’s right,” the governor said.

Scott, a gun owner, had urged the Legislature to pass gun restrictions in the aftermath of what police called a narrowly averted school shooting in Fair Haven by a teenager. He said the incident proved to him that Vermont isn’t immune from the school violence that has plagued other parts of the country.

An arrest in the February Fair Haven case came the day after a high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead.

Vermont’s new gun laws are mild by some standards. But they are part of a trend of states passing gun restrictions, prompted in part by the Florida mass shooting, said Robert Spitzer, a political science professor at the State University of New York at Cortland who has written books on gun policy.

“There has been movement in a number of states,” Spitzer said. But Vermont is significant “because Vermont is traditionally such a strong gun-rights state and has not moved in this direction in ages, if ever,” he said.