PAWLET, Vt. — Fear has gradually spread in the town of Pawlet.

In the hills west of town — which is where the trouble started — the houses are remote, separated by wind-scoured stretches of cropland. Those people are the most jittery.

Some of them have installed cameras with infrared lights so they could pick up figures that might be moving in the dark around their houses. A few have invested in bulletproof vests.

None of it makes them feel entirely safe. Michelle Tilander, 63, a retired physical therapist who moved to West Pawlet 10 years ago, said she had written a letter to be opened in case she or her husband should be hurt or killed.

“The police come in, they’ll find that envelope and they’ll know who to question,” she said.

She is talking about Daniel Banyai, a 47-year-old New Yorker who, attracted by Vermont’s relaxed gun laws, bought 30 acres in this rural town of around 1,400 and transformed it into his dream project, a training camp where visitors could practice shooting as if engaged in armed combat.

Whether those fears are warranted is a question that has preoccupied Vermont law enforcement for months. Certainly, the dispute has escalated over three years from a zoning matter into something more combustible, as Mr. Banyai resisted the town’s demands to dismantle his weapons training facility, Slate Ridge. Anonymous threats to his opponents have appeared online.

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He has argued that his project is protected under the Second Amendment, and, over social media, has called for fellow gun rights advocates to back him up.

“I’m never leaving this land,” he said in an interview. “And I didn’t ask for this war to start, but I’m going to see it through. I want to see through my victory because I bought this land free and clear.”

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The State Police have resisted stepping in, saying they do not believe Mr. Banyai has violated any Vermont state law. But a January court order set the stage for confrontation, ruling that Mr. Banyai must stop using Slate Ridge for training, and the town is now seeking a permanent injunction that could culminate in foreclosure.

“The question is, kind of, how does this end?” said Jessica Van Oort, 44, a Pawlet shop owner who serves as chair of the town’s planning commission.

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“Everybody in the nation has become quite aware of the threat of armed insurrection,” she said. “It’s not foreign to anyone in the U.S. to think of people who have guns and want to defend their freedoms and don’t feel that the laws apply to them.”

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Mr. Banyai, a stocky man from upstate New York with a bushy, untrimmed beard, presented himself to Pawlet’s development board in 2018 as “a veteran who is passionate about guns.” He was mysterious about his past, alluding to overseas service in the Middle East but refusing to offer any details.

His goal was to open a tactical weapons training site featuring as few limits as possible, allowing firearms banned or frowned upon in other places, he said in an interview this month. He chose Vermont specifically because it allowed “constitutional carry,” or carrying a weapon without a permit, he said.

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On his land, in facilities he said cost $1.6 million, visitors can re-enact a range of field exercises — a suburban house, for home invasions; a large open space surrounded by berms, for carjacking and vehicle assaults; and shipboard structures, for high-seas piracy. Months of protests, he said, have made such exercises relevant to many Americans.

“People are more believing the hypotheticals with all the rioting,” he said. “People are getting more conscientious of, you know, how do I defend myself?”

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Mr. Banyai said he had selected the plot in West Pawlet because it was isolated and would not disturb the neighbors.

That turned out to be wrong.

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“All of a sudden, we hear ARs — several ARs — going off, all at the same time, over and over and over,” she said, referring to variants of the AR-15 line. “Paul just said, ‘What is going on around here? It sounds like Vietnam.’”

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It turned out Mr. Banyai had no desire to win over the town. Instead, he fought back tenaciously in court, arguing that his weapons site did not require land use permits from the state because he did not charge for admission. At a town meeting, he accused town officials, without evidence, of corruption, homophobia and membership in the Ku Klux Klan. He made it clear he would not back down.

“If there’s two types of people in this world — people that are strong and people that are weak,” he explained in an interview, “I’m among the strong percentage.”

Threats against the complaining neighbors began to appear on Slate Ridge’s Facebook page, unsigned and cryptic, alongside right-wing memes and ominous photographs of stockpiles of weapons.

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An investigative news outlet, VT Digger, picked up the story, and the neighbors looked into Mr. Banyai’s past. An Army spokesman confirmed that Mr. Banyai had served briefly in the 1990s, showing up in records as a private, the Army’s lowest rank.

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“Nobody wants to go in there because everybody’s afraid of him,” she said. “We’re 99 and nine-tenths percent sure from everything he said, he has a big cache of heavy-duty weaponry and explosive material.”

In fact, in a state that has long relied on voluntary compliance, the problem of Slate Ridge seemed to fall between jurisdictions.

The state’s Natural Resources Board — which requires permits for any commercial development — refused to send its inspectors to Slate Ridge because of concerns that Mr. Banyai might be dangerous, and in 2018 and 2019 asked law enforcement to take over the case, said Evan Meenan, associate general counsel for the body.

The State Police refused, explaining that land use has never fallen within their responsibilities. Since then, the State Police have also investigated at least 10 complaints against Mr. Banyai without finding information to warrant any criminal charge, said Michael Schirling, the state’s commissioner of public safety. Fear, he said, was not a factor.

The police “are in fairly regular contact with folks there, as result of a number of investigations that occurred,” he said. “I haven’t heard anyone make that assessment.”

For his part, Mr. Banyai dismisses the suggestion that he would ever use force against the police, who he says are “already scared to death of me.” He says he has regular visits from the police, as well as the F.B.I. and A.T.F., who enforce federal weapons laws.

“I tell police all the time, if I have to come into handcuffs, call me, I can come down or I’ll just meet you at the gate and surrender myself,” he said.

In recent weeks, he has made the conflict into a political cause, declaring his candidacy for town selectman under the motto “Make Pawlet Great Again.”

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Ms. Van Oort, who is running for the Select Board, said it dawned on her gradually how heavily the town relies on a spirit of voluntary cooperation.

“The real difficulty is, when someone just decides not to obey a civil law, what happens?” she said.

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“I think we all kind of let our guard down,” she said. “We’re just not equipped to deal with people like him.”

https://dnyuz.com/2021/02/23/a-bristling-standoff-rattles-gun-friendly-vermont/

I have no recollection of that event at all.