Now the state is calling his range a “paramilitary training camp.”
The setting is the village of Pawlet near the New York border, which boasts a population of 1,386.
Daniel Banyai purchased 30 acres in 2013 and built two shooting ranges on his property, which he calls Slate Ridge. However, neighbors complained about the noise from the target practice, and some did not like the look of his visitors.
The firearms training center became a judge’s target in 2021, and Banyai was ordered to take apart most of what he had created. A Vermont Environmental Court declared that the structures on his property were built without permits.
The owner, however, refused. He flatly declared that “we are not going to do that. We have not done anything wrong; we haven’t done anything illegal.”
Banyai called his facility a safe and environmentally friendly site for people to practice firing their weapons. He noted there are lessons offered in first aid and practically “anything to do with the outdoors and firearms.”
The owner is a native of Hyde Park, New York, and said he chose to move to Vermont because of its less restrictive approach to Second Amendment freedoms. He also believes that he has been rejected by the tightly knit community for being from out of state.
The standoff with the state’s Environmental Court is coming to a head. When zoning efforts fell apart, the court ordered Banyai to remove the structures that were built without permits along with the earthen berms within 135 days.
The ruling was ignored, and in February Banyai was held in contempt of court. It was then that he began accumulating civil fines of $200 per day for his refusal to comply.
Local officials lobbied Vermont State Senator Phillip Baruth (D) for assistance in shutting down the firearms facility. He agreed to help shutter Banyai’s shooting range and cobbled together a bill creating the felony of operating a “paramilitary training camp” in Vermont.
Baruth confessed he created the bill when Pawlet leaders told him there was no state law they could enforce to close the private shooting ranges.
But now that effort reached the Capitol and became successful — at least on paper. Last week, Vermont Gov. Phil Scott (R) signed the bill into law.
Specifically, the bill prohibits a person from being able to “teach, train, or demonstrate to any other person the use, application or making of a firearm, explosive, or incendiary device capable of causing injury or death to persons, if the person knows or reasonably should know that the teaching, training, or demonstrating is intended to be used in or in furtherance of a civil disorder.”
The law further disallows the assembly of “one or more other persons” for the same purpose.
Exempted are law enforcement, military science institutions, self-defense and firearm instructors, and sports and activities such as hunting, target shooting and firearms collection.
Penalties may reach five years in prison and a $50,000 fine.
Naturally, those who oppose gun rights celebrated the new law targeting one man’s operation. Allison Anderman of Giffords’ Guns and Democracy Project called it a “commonsense policy.”
Those who oppose the Second Amendment repeatedly term anything they do support as “common sense.”
But the law is vague, perhaps impossibly vague. There are scores of private gun ranges across the nation, and are they now subject to be put under the microscope for political opinions?
The fact is, Banyai was likely targeted because some neighbors did not approve of legal gun activity on his private property. It is chilling to know that the government may craft a new law with the specific person of closing down private activities on private property that involve constitutional freedoms.
This action will not likely stand up to a strong court challenge.
