[S]everal physicians testified in favor of proposed gun legislation Friday, framing the bill as a public health measure.
The legislation, S.31, has three components. First, it would make it a crime to sell a gun privately without the supervision of a licensed dealer, who would perform a background check on the purchaser. Second, it would allow state-level prosecutors to enforce federal firearm possession laws.
It would also require Vermont to report the names of people with mental illness who a judge has ruled are a danger to themselves or others to the National Instant Background Checks System — the database used to check if someone is able to purchase a gun.
The medical professionals spoke before the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, which is not formally taking up the bill, but will provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with a memo addressing whether they believe universal background checks and mental health reporting promote public health.
Christopher Barsotti, an emergency department physician at Southwestern Medical Center in Bennington, is on the advisory board for the National Medical Council on Gun Violence. The group aims to elevate the role of emergency medicine as a stakeholder in the debate over gun regulation in the U.S., he said.
“We are the ones that have to deal with this,” he said, adding that he and his colleagues not only treat gunshot victims, but frequently deal with violent patients, some of whom have psychiatric problems. In some cases they become the target of gun violence, he added.
Predicting who will commit a violent act with a gun is impossible, he said, but it is possible to reduce the firearms deaths by “stratifying” people based on risk factors and disqualifying certain populations from having them, he said.
The greatest risk factors for future violent behavior, according to Barsotti, are past violent acts and substance abuse — both alcohol and drugs. Federal laws already disqualify many people with those risk factors from purchasing guns, but a 2013 study showed that 95 percent of prohibited persons who commit gun-related crimes obtain them through private transfers.
Sen. Claire Ayer, D-Addison, asked Barsotti to respond to the argument put forward by gun rights advocates that prohibited persons would not obey a background check law and would still obtain a firearm illegally.
“I’d like to see the data that would suggest that they would do that, because I don’t think that exists…it’s conjecture,” he said.
Afterwards, Ayer said she believes it’s “contradictory” for gun rights advocates to say that subsets of people — violent felons for example — should not have firearms, but that not all firearms purchases need a check to see if the buyer is prohibited.
Turning to the mental health reporting requirement, David Coddaire, president of the Vermont Medical Society, said he believes the bill balances the need to “tease out” potentially dangerous individuals, while not discriminating against the mentally ill or discouraging them from seeking treatment.
People with mental illness are not inherently more likely to be violent, but there is a subset who are at a higher risk, he said. By setting the standard for reporting as someone who has been adjudicated by a court to be a danger, the bill avoids being overly broad, he said.
Ed Cutler, president of Gun Owners of Vermont, disagreed telling lawmakers that the mental health reporting would deter many gun owners from seeking treatment out fear they could lose the right to possess firearms.
The majority of gun deaths in the U.S. and Vermont are self-inflicted, and the gun rights community would benefit more from harm reduction efforts that frame suicide prevention in terms of firearm safety, he said.
Cutler and other Vermont gun rights advocates say they will work to implement a public health program started in New Hampshire known as the Gun Shop Project, which offers educational materials to gun shops, shooting ranges and others that explain the heightened suicide risk for people who own firearms.
“We need education and counseling, not legislation,” Cutler said. In a rare moment of unity in an otherwise derisive debate, gun safety advocates at the hearing joined with Cutler to say they would support bringing the Gun Shop Project to Vermont.
Despite Cutler’s objections, the mental health reporting requirement has support from the Vermont Chiefs of Police. Some gun rights advocates have described it as the most palatable portion of a bill they otherwise vehemently oppose.
Others have raised technical challenges the provision presents, including that it may cast too wide a net. Mental health advocates have said that some people may be found to be a danger to themselves by a court for “self neglect,” such as refusing to take medications and could unnecessarily be swept into the FBI database.
Finally, S.31 creates a court process for persons determined by a court to petition for their right to own a gun to be reinstated. The problem there is that the bill does not define a legal threshold for the court to use in determining whether a person is no longer a danger.
That is an issue better decided by the Judiciary Committee, said Ayer, who flagged it with legislative attorneys. Her committee will review the evidence presented in testimony and write it’s memo to Judiciary sometime next week.
