by Maggie Lenz and Nick Charyk on behalf of Atlas Government Affairs 

Shots and Shots Don’t Mix?
Gun safety legislation has long been a third rail in Vermont politics. A pivotal moment came in 1990, when Bernie Sanders was elected to the U.S. House, partly due to the NRA’s support after his opponent, Peter Smith, pushed for an assault weapons ban. The NRA spent heavily to defeat Smith, reshaping Vermont’s gun politics for years to come.

Governor Peter Shumlin, despite strong pressure, stood firm against any gun reforms during his tenure. In 2016, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Sue Minter broke with tradition, running ads advocating for tougher gun control. Minter lost to Republican Phil Scott. Scott, ironically, implemented meaningful reforms in 2018, including requiring background checks for private gun sales, after a potential school shooting was narrowly averted in Fair Haven. There has been no significant legislation since.

This year, in March, Burlington voters again approved a charter change banning guns in bars, with 86.6% in favor. In 2014, Burlington voters had previously approved a similar measure. However, for a charter change to become law, it must be approved by the Legislature. Usually a routine bit of legislative sign-off, this change instead languished in committee and never made it to a full vote.

On Thursday, a group of service industry professionals, lawmakers, and gun safety advocates gathered at the State House to call on the Legislature to approve Burlington’s charter change (S.131). The proposal is being championed by Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Baruth, who stated, “Guns and alcohol don’t mix… let’s keep guns out of bars. It’s common sense.”

Local business owners and service industry workers echoed these concerns. Max Pogacar, a Burlington bar manager, explained, “Alcohol impairs judgment, and a firearm only increases the risk of violence.”

Later that day, the Senate Government Operations Committee heard testimony on the charter change, with supporters making their case for the ban. However, gun rights advocates, including Eric Davis, President of Gun Owners of Vermont, argued that carrying a gun for self-defense is a natural right that should not be restricted by location.

He stated, “Your life does not become any less important simply because you’ve crossed an imaginary line,” and warned that the ban could have wide-reaching consequences for Vermonters who carry for personal protection.

As Vermont once again grapples with the tension between public safety and the Second Amendment, the proposed legislation still has a long way to go before becoming law. Or it could go up in smoke once more.

Service industry professionals, lawmakers, and gun safety advocates speak at the Vermont State House on Thursday

Curiosities: a weekly peek at the odd and intriguing happenings under the Golden Dome

If It Seems Too Good to Be True…
On April 1, Vermont’s AllEarth Renewables made headlines with the launch of the “iNuke™,” a backyard microreactor the size of a breadbox, promising decades of clean power for little to no cost.

It was an April Fool’s prank. But some news outlets ran with it as fact.

As fans of any well-executed prank, we of course reached out to AllEarth founder David Blittersdorf to find out more about what he was hoping to accomplish.

“When we put it out on PR Newswire, they didn’t catch that it was a joke,” he told us. “Alabama put it out as a real thing. A handful of others did too. That’s how ready people are to believe in energy miracles.”

The fake iNuke was meant to poke at a very real issue: Governor Scott and several other New England governors recently signed on to a multi-state push for so-called “advanced nuclear” technology. Small modular reactors, fusion breakthroughs, cheap power without emissions… It all sounds great. But that doesn’t make it real.

“This idea that we are at a renaissance of nuclear power is a joke,” Blittersdorf argued. “It isn’t going to happen.”

He’s got a point. Even if new nuclear innovations eventually pan out, they’re decades away. And the odds of success, according to Blittersdorf, are “.0001 percent.”

In the meantime, Vermont is facing very real consequences of climate change. Our recent devastating floods weren’t a fluke, they were a warning.

There’s also the not-so-small matter of where our power comes from right now. Vermont relies heavily on energy imported from Canada. And with President Trump’s newly announced “reciprocal tariffs,” that clean power supply could become more expensive and less stable. State officials are already warning of increased costs and complications from this latest turn in the U.S.–Canada trade relationship.

It’s also worth noting that Vermont Yankee, once the state’s largest power source, was shut down in 2014 after years of controversy and public debate. That chapter closed with hard lessons about the risks and realities of nuclear energy. Betting on a nuclear revival today, in the face of a rapidly worsening climate crisis, seems a lot like magical thinking.

The iNuke was fake. The stakes are not. And things that seem too good to be true rarely are. 

The fabled iNuke product

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