[A]fter being watered down in the Senate, sitting in a House committee for seven weeks, and finally passing easily on the House floor, legislation requiring a 24-hour waiting period for handgun purchases is one vote away from Gov. Phil Scott’s desk.
After a compromise was struck in the Senate Judiciary Committee in March, passage through the rest of the Statehouse was likely — if Democratic House leadership let it move to the floor.
On Wednesday they did, and the bill passed easily: 82-58. It is scheduled for a final vote Thursday.
“The bill is a good balance of protecting Second Amendment rights and public safety and public health,” said House Judiciary Chair Rep. Maxine Grad after the vote. “I think there’s something for everybody, in a sense.”
Some House Republicans found little to like about the bill, but their support was never expected.
The wild card is the governor, who has said he sees no need for new gun control laws, and is unconvinced that a firearm purchase waiting period would save lives.
The 82 votes in the House is not enough to override a veto, meaning he has the ability to stop the bill from passing into law.
“Letting it go into law is the key,” said Rep. Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, the reporter of the bill and a House Judiciary member, whether that means the governor signing it or not.
A year ago, Scott made the surprising decision to publicly throw his support behind a package of gun reform bills that he signed in front of angry gun rights supporters and delighted gun control advocates on the Statehouse steps.
This time around, there’s far less certainty about where the governor will come down on the gun control measure.
His support for gun control last year seemed to hurt his popularity in polling later in the year, but he still won the GOP primary and reelection handily, and threats from the gun rights lobby to oust him did not materialize.
Republicans were joined by a handful of Democrats and independents in opposing this year’s waiting period bill. But opponents could do little to prevent their colleagues from approving the bill unchanged, clearing the way for the legislation to go straight to the governor without another stop in the Senate.
The GOP members did, however, introduce amendments and demand roll call votes that kept their colleagues in the House chamber well into the evening.
Among the failed amendments were exemptions of the following groups from the waiting period: online shoppers; gun show customers; domestic violence victims with legal documentation of an imminent threat; and individuals who have previously purchased a gun from a licensed firearm dealer.
Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, vice chair of the House Health Care Committee, moved to refer the bill to her committee, arguing that a central part of it was suicide prevention, which is almost always treated as a health care issue when it appears in legislation.
“I think that there’s very little doubt that a primary component of this bill is a subject that … should have been thoroughly better and understood in the health care committee,” she said.
Supporters of the bill didn’t agree, shooting down the amendment 94-46.
After the vote, Donahue raised the question of whether the bill was gun control masquerading as suicide prevention. “The refusal to have the health care committee review it answers that question,” she said.
Much of the debate involved arguments that have been made time and again in recent months, during two public hearings on the bill — one in Montpelier and another in Randolph — and in House and Senate committee rooms.
Opponents said victims of violence would be safer if they had guns, argued that gun control infringes on constitutional rights, and claimed that individuals who want to commit suicide will find a way to do it, whether they can immediately buy a gun or not.
Supporters countered that adding additional guns into violent situations only increased the chance of tragedy, said limitations on gun rights was worthwhile to save lives, and cited statistics showing that gun suicides were far more deadly than other means.
The bill also includes changes to the magazine ban passed last year, which will allow out-of-state sportsmen to bring high-capacity loading devices into the state for shooting competitions. That piece was supported by gun rights advocated, but did not change their opinion about the overall bill.
Rep. Patrick Brennan, R-Colchester, said he might be inclined to vote for a bill that could save lives, but hadn’t seen any evidence that a firearm waiting period would.
“I think it’s based on emotion,” he said. “It’s another little chip in gun rights.”
LaLonde said Vermont’s entire medical community, apart from some individual physicians, believed that there was evidence that waiting periods save lives.
And the lack of data, he said, traced back to efforts by the National Rifle Association to defund gun violence research and suppress information like background checks conducted at federally licensed firearm dealers, which never go into a centralized database.
“So that data that you could look at and say, all right, here are these people who committed suicide, can we somehow correlate that when they purchase the firearm? It’s not there,” LaLonde said in an interview after the vote. “But it’s suppressed for a reason.”
Two members of the audience watching from the House gallery were Alyssa and Rob Black, the parents of Andrew Black, who shot himself dead on Dec. 6. The Blacks made a call in his obituary for the waiting period legislation, and have witnessed almost every discussion about it in the Statehouse since.
They said their son’s death was evidence that waiting periods would make a difference.
“We have 36 hours worth of text messages to prove that is completely wrong,” Rob Black said of claims that a 24-hour waiting period would make no difference. One of Andrew’s last text messages said that he regretted purchasing the gun, but felt like it was too late to reverse course. “He ran out of time,” his father said.
Alyssa Black said she hoped the governor would once again buck his party and support the measure.
“We believe that Governor Scott has shown time and time again that he’s willing to make courageous decisions,” she said. “I would hope that he will make that again.”
