[A] South Burlington lawmaker is continuing to pare down a sweeping amendment he proposed last week calling for additional gun restrictions in Vermont, this time removing a provision requiring the locked storage of firearms.
“I think the way it’s drafted, it’s a little broad,” Rep. Martin LaLonde, a Democrat, said Tuesday of that proposal during a session of the House Judiciary Committee. “I would suggest, reluctantly, that safe storage just needs more work and needs more testimony.”
The House Judiciary Committee is set to vote as early as Wednesday on the bill, S.55, that LaLonde had proposed amending. That bill would expand background checks in Vermont to private sales and increase the age to purchase a firearm in the state to 21.
LaLonde’s amendment to that bill had proposed several provisions, most of which he has since withdrawn, including a ban on assault-style firearms and a 10-day waiting period for the sale of guns.
As of Tuesday, all that remains of LaLonde’s wide-ranging proposal is a ban on high-capacity magazines, or those capable of holding at least 10 rounds of ammunition.
“A person shall not manufacture, possess, transfer, offer for sale, purchase, receive, or import into this State a large capacity ammunition feeding device,” the legislation reads.
Magazines legally owned before the legislation goes into effect would be exempt from.
In continuing to back the provision regarding high-capacity magazine, LaLonde read a letter of support for the measure from Windsor County State’s Attorney David Cahill.
“Balancing a would-be victim’s constitutional right to (continued) life against the constitutional right of another to bear arms is no easy task,” Cahill wrote in his letter. “It is my professional opinion that a 10 round magazine limit fairly balances these competing rights and, if enforced, would offer victims and first responders a brief window to act during a mass shooting incident.”
In withdrawing the proposal regarding the locked storage of firearms, LaLonde said he needed to find a way to protect young children from accessing firearms in a home without being overly burdensome to a single person who lives alone in a remote setting.
Requiring only those people with young children in their households to lock their guns, he said, “might have some equal protection problems.”
He then added, “It just needs more time.”
The provision stated that a person “shall not or otherwise leave a firearm outside his or her immediate possession or control without having first securely locked the firearm in a safe storage depository or, by use of a tamper-resistant mechanical gun lock or other device appropriate to that weapon, rendered it incapable of being fired.”
Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D-Burlington and a committee member, said she understood LaLonde’s concern, but questioned pulling the proposal.
“It does seem that we certainly try to pass a lot of laws that talk about keeping dangerous things out of the hands of children, including marijuana and tobacco,” she said, adding of the storage proposal, “I don’t think that would be that controversial.”
“I think everything in this bill is controversial,” Rep. Maxine Grad, D-Moretown and committee chair, replied.
Rep. Tom Burditt, R-West Rutland and the committee’s ranking member, then addressed LaLonde, thanking him for withdrawing the storage provision as well as other proposals in his amendment that didn’t appear “ready for prime time.”
LaLonde said he would continue to pursue information on his proposals, including those that have been withdrawn, such as the one involving gun storage.
Earlier Tuesday, state Department for Children and Families Commissioner Ken Schatz testified that about 1,000 children in state custody are in foster care. And the state has a requirement regarding the storage of firearms for foster parents.
According to Schatz, for foster parents, “Any firearm shall be kept in a locked storage space with ammunition stored separately in a locked space, or shall be incapacitated by means of the locking of essential parts of the firearm or the removal and separate locking of such parts.”
Rep. Janssen Willhoit, R-St. Johnsbury and a committee member, asked the commissioner if he had ever heard a complaint from foster parents regarding that requirement.
“I haven’t heard of any,” Schatz responded.
Several Democratic lawmakers also addressed the committee Tuesday, saying they recognized panel members were in the “hot seat” dealing with the controversial issue of gun legislation. Some providing emotional testimony on specific legislation they urged the panel to advance.
Rep. George Till, D-Jericho and one of the lawmakers who testified, told the committee that he would like to see the dropped proposal calling for a waiting period to purchase a firearm brought back to help reduce suicides.
Though, Till said, he would shorten that waiting period from the 10 days initially proposed. “I’m talking about two days, three days, some short time, just to avoid these situations where that moment of despair connects with a lethal means,” he told the panel.
The committee last week heard from students pushing for tighter gun laws, as well as from several gun rights advocates who argued against imposing any additional restrictions on firearm ownership.
Gun rights groups in the state signed a joint letter Tuesday addressed to Grad, the committee chair, and House Speaker Mitzi Johnson, D-Grand Isle.
The letter said “there is every appearance that this momentous piece of legislation will be rammed through House Judiciary in a little over a week with exceedingly limited public input.”
The gun rights groups called on Grad and Johnson to call for a public hearing on S.55.
“Any other course of action would be injurious to the law-making process that is to be expected from our Legislature, a process which should allow Legislators to hear directly from Vermonters,” the letter read.
The House Judiciary Committee is expected to take up S.55 again at 9 a.m. Wednesday.
