This just in from Senate Majority Leader Philip Baruth (D-Chittenden): He's abandoning an attempt to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in Vermont.

In a statement emailed to Seven Days Sunday evening, Baruth says he's planning to withdraw a gun control bill he introduced in the Senate just last Tuesday. 

The move comes a day after roughly 250 gun rights activists rallied at the Statehouse in opposition to Baruth's bill and other measures to restrict access to firearms.

In a three-paragraph statement, Baruth wrote that it's "painfully clear to me now that little support exists in the Vermont Statehouse for this sort of bill" and that he feared the legislation "may already be overshadowing measures with greater consensus."

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Rep. Peter Welch (D-VT) largely endorsed the president's plan, saying the Newtown school massacre "had a big impact on me, and it's had a big impact on Vermonters."

"It's hard to tell, but I would think there are a couple things people ought to be able to agree on. One is to close the gun show loophole," Leahy said in a phone interview from his Washington, D.C. office. "I would hope that most people would think whatever the rules are, they should be the same for everybody."

Leahy (pictured at the Statehouse last week with wife Marcelle Leahy) was more restrained in his reaction to Obama's proposed ban on assault weapons.

"I haven't seen how he describes it," Leahy said. "I'd like to see what it is. It's like if someone came to you and said, 'I have a car to sell you. Do you want to buy it?' You might say, 'Is it four-wheel drive? What kind of car is it?'"

As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Leahy will play a key role in designing any new gun-control laws. He announced earlier Wednesday that he'll hold hearings starting January 30 to consider legislation in response to last month's deadly school shooting in Newtown, Conn. 

Leahy voted for a previous assault weapons ban in 1994 and for an unsuccessful attempt to extend it in 2004. He said a focus of his hearings would be to examine whether the expired ban worked.

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Barely a week before, he and the Burlington City Council were reminded of the strength of Vermont's gun rights community when nearly 100 activists showed up at City Hall to oppose a proposed assault weapons ban.

Apparently, that wasn't enough to dissuade Weinberger from pushing the issue further.

"As the father of a first-grader and as a mayor who gets one of the first calls when someone is shot in this city, I feel a deep responsibility to join the loud call for action now to protect our children and communities from illegal guns," Weinberger said during a press conference Monday afternoon at the Burlington Police Department's North Avenue headquarters.

Standing beside the mayors of Montpelier and Barre, Weinberger announced that he'd joined a national gun control group founded by New York's Michael Bloomberg, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and embraced three of its legislative priorities: to improve the federal background check system, to ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips, and to crack down on gun trafficking.

While hardly breaking new ground in the national debate over gun laws, Weinberger's move was notable in this gun-loving state simply for the contrast it painted with other prominent Vermont politicians, who have mostly sought to avoid discussing gun laws in the wake of last month's deadly school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut.

By raising the issue himself, Burlington's mayor stood out from the crowd. And for a local politician who clearly harbors statewide political ambitions, that's a risky move.

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By a vote of 10 to three, the council instructed the city's charter change committee to draft language barring the possession of such guns and ammunition in Burlington and calling for their "immediate seizure by the police."

The vote was merely a first step in a long process that would require yet another vote by the council, public hearings, a referendum and, ultimately, a vote in the legislature to change the city's charter. Nevertheless, to the nearly 100 Vermonters who showed up to the meeting — nearly all men and many wearing camouflage or blaze orange — the proposal was clearly received as an affront to their right to bear arms.

"There's no excuse why we have this ordinance here other than to politicize something that's a knee-jerk reaction," said Burlington resident Michael McGarghan, one of 25 members of the public who spoke out against the proposal during the meeting. "I'm really disgusted that I had to come here tonight and take time out to talk about this."

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In the 25-question endorsement survey filled out during his 2012 reelection campaign, Shumlin appeared to side with the NRA in all but one case: he disagreed that the mourning dove should be classified as a game bird — "not on principle," he wrote in the margins, "but because Vermont does not have a viable hunting population of doves, and they are primarily found in backyards and roadsides."

On every other issue, though, Shumlin was all in on gun rights:

Does he want to close the gun show loophole in Vermont? No.

Would he support a state ban on assault weapons or high-capacity magazines? No.

Does he support mandatory gun locks? No.

Does he believe Vermonters should be restricted to buying one gun a month? No.

Does he believe guns or gun-owners should be licensed in Vermont? No.

Shumlin's answers help explain why he earned a 92 percent rating from the NRA last fall and a $2500 campaign donation. (Shumlin may have lost points for the 'mourning dove' question and for leaving two others blank.)

Seven Days has been seeking a copy of Shumlin's answers to the survey since December 17, shortly after a gunman opened fire on a school in Newtown, Connecticut, killing 20 young children and six teachers.

Shumlin's campaign manager said at the time she did not keep a copy of the questionnaire. The NRA did not respond to a request from Seven Days to provide it. But after the paper asked Shumlin this week to request a copy from the NRA himself, his staff obtained it and passed it along to Seven Days.

Here it is — after the jump:

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"There can't be a human being in America who has seen the events of what happened in Connecticut and not recognize that we have to do everything in our power to bring some sanity to the availability of weapons of war to people who are unstable and crazy. Period," Shumlin said in an interview with Seven Days.

But Vermont's gun-toting governor cautioned that, "State-by-state solutions don't work," and said he wouldn't support efforts in the Vermont legislature to tackle gun violence at the state level.

"If they worked, we would've solved the problem already. We know that if one state has strict restrictions, you can go purchase an assault weapon at another state or gun show," he said. "So I fully support President Obama's and Joe Biden's urgency to come up with a 50-state solution that will work."

Shumlin, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association, declined to say what approach he thought the federal government should take, but said it should be "multi-faceted" and include enhanced services for those with mental illness.

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Apparently, MacLean didn't keep one.

But given Shumlin's 92 percent rating by the group, it ain't hard to figure out how the pro-gun gov filled it out.

Yesterday, we got our hands on a blank copy of the 25-question survey distributed to Vermont state lawmakers in July (it's posted below). The comprehensive questionnaire touches on everything from safety locks to the expired assault weapons ban to the so-called "gun show loophole." The phrasing of several of the questions is, shall we say, loaded.

Here's an example:

10. In 1994, Congress imposed a ten-year ban on the manufacture, for sale to private individuals, of various semi-automatic firearms it termed "assault weapons," and of ammunition magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition, which primarily affected handguns designed for self-defense. Congress' subsequent study of the ban, as well as state and local law enforcement agency reports, showed that contrary to the ban's supporters' claims, the guns and magazines had never been used in more than about 1-2% of violent crime. Since the ban expired in 2004, the numbers of these firearms and magazines owned have risen to all-time highs and violent crime has fallen to a 35-year low. Would you support state legislation restricting the possession, ownership, purchase, sale, and/or transfer of semi-automatic firearms and/or limits on the capacity of magazines designed for self-defense?

So how did your lawmakers answer?