Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton pointed out on Monday that Bernie Sanders’ home state of Vermont is responsible for many of the guns that end up being used for violence in New York.
“Here’s what I want you to know: most of the guns that are used in crimes and violence and killings in New York come from out of state,” she said at an event focused on gun control issues in Port Washington, N.Y. “And the state that has the highest per capita number of those guns that end up committing crimes in New York come from Vermont.”
“So this is not, ‘Oh, you know, I live in a rural state, we don’t have any of these problems,'” she continued. “This is, you know what, it’s easy to cross borders, criminals, domestic abusers, traffickers, people who are mentally ill, they cross borders too and sometimes they do it to get the guns they use. This has to become a voting issue for those of us who want to save lives.”
Clinton feels that Sen. Sanders is soft of gun control and after refusing to speak to the families of Sandy Hook disaster. Sanders, talking to the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, did not support allowing the families to sue gun manufactures for the tragic massacre.
Her statistics come from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which issued a report in 2013 saying Vermont was in fact, adjusted for population, the highest per-capita source of guns recovered in other states. That year, 23.5 guns per 100,000 residents, or a total of 147, were recovered in crimes committed outside of Vermont. The next-highest per capita state was New Hampshire, with 22.3 guns per 100,000 residents.
And according to Everytown, a nonprofit that advocates for stronger gun control laws, notes that between 2006 and 2013, 479 guns originally purchased in Vermont were recovered in other states.
An ATF report from 2014 put Vermont in the top 15 states whose guns were recovered in New York. Still, it’s worth noting that guns from Vermont are just a tiny fraction of the overall number of out-of-state guns recovered there: that year, Vermont’s guns were 55 of the total 4,585 out-of-state guns. In the same year Georgia was the source for 386 out-of-state guns and 395 were traced to Virginia.