Gun safety law is in limbo, despite recent teen suicides

Leah Short died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her home in Dummerston on Jan. 17. Just 36 hours later, Connor Menning was found dead in the boys’ bathroom at Mount Mansfield Union High School. He, too, had shot himself in the head.

The two suicides have reignited debate about a proposed bill that now appears to be languishing in the Vermont House of Representatives.

Rep. Linda Waite-Simpson, D-Essex Junction, is the lead sponsor of H.83, also known as the CAP (Child Access Protection from firearms) bill. She floated the legislation last year in response to the suicide of 15-year-old Aaron Xue in April 2009. The boy was provided with guns and ammunition by a schoolmate who had access to them at home.

Supporters call H. 83 a “child protection” measure because it is designed to reduce teen suicide as well as gun injuries and accidental deaths caused by children. It would parallel, though not mirror, laws enacted in the four other New England states. (Maine is the only other state that doesn’t have such a law in place.)

Opponents from the NRA and Gun Owners of Vermont decry H.83 as “gun grabbing” masquerading as “gun safety.”

There is nothing new about this kind of legislation. Most of the 27 state CAP laws were adopted between the late 1980s and 2000, and H.83 is modeled on a law introduced 10 years ago.

What has changed is the impetus for the legislation. Dr. Ge Wu, the mother of Aaron Bing Xue and founder of Citizens for Safer Vermont Children, has brought a new level of visibility and grassroots support to the issue.

Wu, who can be seen on a daily basis at the Statehouse camping out in the cafeteria or patiently waiting outside Senate and House Committee rooms, has been an indefatigable champion of the bill.

Pro-gun opponents have responded by harassing her and Waite-Simpson. Recently, a threatening letter from a man in Waite-Simpson’s town was intercepted by the Sergeant-at-Arms in the Statehouse; the Essex Town representative has also received bullying calls. Dr. Wu has fared better, though she has not been immune from name-calling.

Stuck on “the wall”

It isn’t the first time the Legislature has proposed CAP legislation, most often in response to a tragedy. The latest version, H.83, “an act relating to negligent storage of a firearm,” has 28 sponsors in the House, but it’s on the long list of House Judiciary Committee legislation, and it looks like it may remain stuck in committee. (When it was introduced in 2010, it was too late in the session to pass.)

H. 83 has not “come off the wall” in the committee—House lingo for not scheduling testimony—which is the first step for a bill that is actually going to make it to the floor of the House for a vote. Sources say it is unlikely to emerge from the Judiciary Committee by the March 18 “crossover” date when House bills must have been voted on and sent to the Senate.

Waite-Simpson, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Kenny Atkins (D-Burlington/Winooski), who also sees value in the bill, say that the committee’s decision not to take testimony works against another major purpose of the legislation — raising awareness about the need to store firearms safely.

It is easy to forget that you have guns around the house, Waite-Simpson points out. And with estimates of the number of Vermont households with guns running from 45 percent to 55 percent, she would like the committee to take up the bill because “anyone can testify—the State’s Attorney, victims’ rights representatives, the NRA.” She also thinks the final bill will be stronger if there is more public outreach.

Atkins, a nationally ranked competitive pistol shooter and an NRA member, says “by not talking about this bill we’re missing an opportunity to give it a good vetting. A lot of people are afraid of the bill. I’m not.”

He’s heard from the NRA—“I’m trying to let them know that it’s not a bill attacking our ownership of guns. It’s about storing (them) in a proper manner, so if a youngster comes upon it or wants to use it they can’t. Of course, they don’t like me very much. Yes, there is sometimes danger from a gun bill but the sky isn’t falling.”

Atkins, however, who has an underground range at home where he practices for competitions, is not one of the bill’s sponsors. The bill as drafted has after-the-fact penalties for negligent storage of firearms which he sees as “the stick” and he prefers a carrot.

A teacher in the Winooski schools for 34 years, Atkins believes children need to be educated about guns, and he has been trying for years to get the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program into Vermont schools. Eddie Eagle acknowledges that children are curious about firearms, are bombarded with cartoons, TV shows and movies where guns are shown, and “may have developed inaccurate perceptions of what a firearm does.” They compare the Eddie Eagle “four-part plan” to “Smokey the Bear teach[ing] children not to play with matchbooks.”

So far, though many states have been given curriculum materials through grants— obviously important, Atkins says, with a state budget in crisis—he has not been able to get confirmation that the NRA would make a grant.

An NRA representative at the Eddie Eagle program says Vermont is up for a grant in October, but that “funding is in place now.” They were not forthcoming about whether Vermont had ever been granted funding. (Their site says grants are made “if grant funding is available” to schools, law enforcement agencies, hospitals, daycare centers and libraries).

A child welfare measure

Here’s a closer look at the bill in its current form: An “after-the-fact finding” would allow, but not require, investigating deaths or injuries resulting from a child up to the age of 18 getting hold of a firearm. It would also establish penalties for careless storage of firearms—those left unlocked and available. (“After-a-tragedy” might better describe such deaths and injuries.)

Prosecution would be up to the Attorney General in cases where a suicide or unintentional death or injury happens in a family where the gun was available. Until and only if there is a death or injury involving firearms, there are no checks on how guns are stored. And owners make the decision whether to keep a loaded and locked gun handy or lock guns up.

Is H. 83 destined to die a slow death? Past history is not a sure guide. Failure to thrive in one legislative session does not mean the end for a bill. In this case, Rep. Waite-Simpson expects the bill to take shape over several sessions and she’s encouraged by a new understanding among legislators that the bill is “a way to get at the few people who are being careless about storing their firearms.” She sees awareness of the dangers of unsafe storage increasing with more debate on the issue.

But passing a bill could do more: “Wouldn’t it be a good thing if when you went to buy a gun there was a notice that you could be fined if you let a child gain access to a gun?” she asks.

Waite-Simpson and others say the bill will continue to evolve. The age of the children protected may be lowered to 16 from 18 or the penalties for negligent storage may be reduced to a fine rather than a possible prison sentence, making it only a civil offence.

This evolution is part of the legislative process. A parallel to H. 83 would be H.264, now known as “Nick’s Law,” which will also levy “after-the-fact” penalties, in this case on drunk drivers whose negligence causes death or injury. That bill is expected to pass this year. (In 2008, the last year for which statistics are available, there were 12 drunk-driving deaths. By contrast, that year there were 52 firearms deaths—7 murders, 44 suicides and 1 accidental.)

Reconsideration of Nick’s Law has been spurred by a recent tragedy. In Burlington last December, Kaye Borneman, 43, was killed when Timothy Dowd allegedly hit her with his vehicle. He was, police say, drunk at the time of the accident.

Like “Nick’s Law,” the bill informally referred to as “Aaron’s law” is among many introduced in every session that have children’s safety and welfare in mind, laws intended, in one way or another, to protect young people. In the 2009-2010 biennium, there were 125 child-related bills, concerned with everything from custody issues to sex abuse and human trafficking. This number is inflated to a degree because some bills are introduced by different sponsors in slightly different forms, but more than 30 passed, including S. 280, which prohibited texting while driving if you are under 18. This year, a bill requiring various measures to ensure precautions are taken to prevent death or permanent damage from sports-related head injuries is on its way to the Senate. (The context in this case: Centers for Disease Control estimates of 3.9 million head injuries a year in the U.S.)

So far legislators have not been besieged by opponents. But should the bill begin to take off, more voices will surely be heard. This is, after all, Vermont, a hunters’ state with highest rate of households with firearms in New England . The latest estimate of the number of children living in households with loaded guns (2005) is also the highest in New England, though the percentage living in households with loaded and unlocked guns is no higher than elsewhere (<1.5 percent).

And Vermont is the state the NRA and Gun Owners of America celebrate when they cite the low crime rate and the few gun-related laws. “Vermont carry” laws, which allow carrying of concealed or visible weapons—in a car or on your person—without a permit sets Vermont as a model for the rest of the country in NRA and GOA terms. There are no gun licensing or registration requirements, no waiting period to buy a gun, no requirement for firearms safety training before you can buy a gun, private sales do not require records and there are no state laws limiting who can buy a gun.

The state does set forth a few restrictions. It is illegal to “sell or furnish” a firearm to a minor under 16. Gun dealers are required to keep a record of all handgun sales and conduct background checks, and it is illegal to carry a gun on school property, in a school bus or in a courthouse. There are a number of state statutes laying out penalties for criminal use of weapons, including guns, among them V.S.A.§4003, regarding “carrying dangerous weapons.” It reads:

A person who carries a dangerous or deadly weapon, openly or concealed, with the intent or avowed purpose of injuring a fellow man, or who carries a dangerous or deadly weapon within any state institution or upon the grounds or lands owned or leased for the use of such institution, without the approval of the warden or superintendent of the institution, shall be imprisoned not more than two years or fined not more than $200.00, or both.

But to vocal opponents, the CAP law is a threat to gun ownership by “law-abiding citizens” who are not only hunters carrying on an old Vermont tradition but need firearms to defend their homes. The NRA’s website provides the lexicon for opponents, asserting that “safe storage laws [turn] into a tool for disarming the American public” and are made by “gun grabbers.”

CAP laws and teen suicide

The NRA dismisses CAP laws as a way to reduce teen suicide by pointing to statistics that show firearms injuries declining over the last couple of decades. It analyzes a number of studies used to support increasing gun controls in order to reduce murders and suicides and finds many reasons to doubt the evidence. But it provides no data to rebut the evidence that teen suicides have gone down in states where there are CAP laws.

Gun Owners of Vermont director Ed Cutler sees no reason to “compromise” gun ownership with laws, “the reason being anyone who would misuse a firearm is not going to pay attention to any firearms law,” as he said at a meeting last year. The Gun Owners of Vermont website characterizes the bill as “anti-gun and detrimental to all gun owners.”

Activists like Cutler say access to unlocked guns is not responsible for the rare cases of teen suicide and unintentional deaths or the more common unintentional firearms injuries, asserting that other methods will be used if a gun is not available. In his view, there is no cause and effect — suicides are just “something that will happen.”

To parents like Dr. Wu, each death that could have been avoided if guns had a lock on them counts. Supporters, seeing the declines in teen suicides in states that have CAP laws, view each life saved as confirmation that CAP laws are “common sense practice,” posing no threat to gun owners’ freedom to keep guns. Rare as teen suicides are here—about two a year—the question is whether they could become rarer if there were a penalty, criminal or civil, for failing to put a lock on a gun that was then used lethally by a young person.

It’s not an open-and-shut case. The final verdict on CAP laws is not in, despite numerous studies. Supporters can only cite a large body of evidence that there is an association between CAP law passage and declines in firearms-related deaths. The strongest association was between CAP laws and a reduction (8.3 percent) in suicides of youth between 14 and 17 in states that had them.

A similar conclusion was laid out in an amicus brief supporting a District of Columbia CAP law in 2008, by the American Public Health Association, the American College of Preventive Medicine and the American Trauma Society, which reviewed the literature and concluded that “although clearly beneficial, requiring safe storage alone will not prevent most homicides, suicides, or accidental deaths.” On the other hand, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) concluded in 2005 that these laws reduced the number of non-fatal gun injuries. The study found that “CAP laws substantially reduce non-fatal gun injuries among both children and adults.” The study, based on hospital statistics from 1988-2001, underlined that most gun injuries are non-fatal.

Not all enthusiastic gun owners share Ed Cutler’s “no compromise” view lock, stock and barrel. For Wendy Butler, a Middlebury “primitive biathlon” competitor certified to teach hunter’s and bowhunter’s courses, gun safety is fundamental, whether she is teaching women who want to learn to hunt or do target shooting or mentoring young girls who want to learn to hunt. Guns are part of her life, as she comes from a family that has hunted for generation after generation.

The bill is not the kind of thing she’s inclined to favor, but she is concerned with children’s casual access to guns. She lives by the rule that guns are to be treated with respect, and she is shocked by the kind of casual shootings that are shown on TV shows like CSI. She did not let her own children play around with toy guns when they were growing up, but says her son, Wesley, “probably shot his first gun when he was five or six.” That was in a structured situation; she sat him down at a shooting bench with the gun on a pad and gave him one round to fire at a time.

In her role as educator, she recommends gun locks to other gun owners and has a gun safe in her own house. Ammunition is kept locked up. If there is a gun out, it is unloaded and kept above the reach of small children. But, living out on a farm, she also feels safer having a gun in the house in case of intruders; her house has been broken into twice while she was out.

“My first reaction is not to have these laws in Vermont,” she says, acknowledging that she has not yet read this particular law, “people are taking responsibility and we have a lot of guns.” She is “hesitant about endorsing gun laws,” much, she says, as she resists laws restricting smoking or putting a tax on soda pop, feeling that people should be left to make their own choices about how they behave.

Her answer to the problem—and she sees the curiosity in children and the impulsivity in teenagers and worries about that—is education, but not in the classroom. Her vision is of more youngsters learning to hunt: “If more kids had access to guns and had the opportunity to go out into the woods, get fresh air and sunshine and had the experience of how final killing an animal is, I think that they would feel better they are connected to the real world, the natural world.” And experiencing “the finality of a life if they actually do kill an animal” would give them respect for guns.

CORRECTION: Dowd had a valid driver’s license at the time of the accident. We originally stated that he was driving with a suspended license.