The Vermont Senate approved legislation Thursday that would ban guns from Vermont hospitals and set up a legislative study of whether to prohibit firearms from the Capitol Complex in Montpelier.
On the virtual Senate floor Thursday, the proposal was split into two votes — one on banning guns in hospitals and the other on the legislative study. Senators voted 20-9 in favor of prohibiting guns in hospitals and 19-10 for the proposed study.
The bill is expected to be given final approval Friday, then be sent to the House of Representatives.
Senate President Pro Tempore Becca Balint, D-Windham, urged passage of the legislation Thursday, calling it an example of a firearm prohibition that Vermonters support.
“Most Vermonters are not seeking to repeal the Second Amendment. They are not trying to ban the sale of guns used for self-defense or for hunting,” Balint said.
“Guns in Vermont are not going away,” she said. “What Vermonters want are sensible gun laws.”
Sen. Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, lead sponsor of the legislation, told senators Thursday he wished the bill’s ban on firearms was more expansive, but said the study on Statehouse security is an important step.
Baruth said the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in Washington, D.C. have brought more urgency to the idea of strengthening security around the Vermont Statehouse.
“We have seen multiple state capitals taken over, in effect, by groups of heavily armed men wearing tactical gear and body armor,” Baruth said. “Asking now whether we need stronger prohibitions on firearms within the Statehouse or other buildings in the Capitol Complex is not a crazy idea.”
Baruth also used the 2017 Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center case — in which a person walked into the hospital and shot his 70-year-old mother, who was receiving treatment — as an example of the type of gun violence that can take place.
The legislation, S.30, was drastically whittled down from the original proposal, which would also have banned firearms from government buildings and child care centers. That proposal was initially co-sponsored by 16 senators, a majority of the 30-member chamber.
However, the legislation hit serious roadblocks in the Senate Committee on Judiciary, with gun-rights advocates arguing that it was unconstitutional and that the state’s trespass statute already covered what the bill aimed to address.
Under current law, firearms are banned from courthouses and schools. The bill the Senate approved Thursday would add hospitals to that list. If it were signed into law, a person who knowingly brought a gun into a hospital could be fined up to $1,000 and imprisoned for up to a year.
Sen. Joe Benning, R-Caledonia, said Thursday he felt compelled to speak on the Senate floor, and called the legislation a slippery slope toward eroding Vermonters’ constitutional right to carry firearms for self-protection.
Benning contends there’s little evidence that people carrying firearms into hospitals is a serious enough issue to warrant a possible restriction of rights enshrined in the Vermont Constitution.
“We have a legal, a moral and a clear responsibility to not impinge on that document’s rights without clear evidence as to why that should happen,” Benning said.
Sen. Ruth Hardy, D-Addison, responded to Benning, saying that women — in their homes and at their work — are usually the victims of gun violence and that “guns are more likely to be used in violence against women than in self-defense by women.”
“Two days ago, the hate-crime-induced shooting in Georgia, which killed eight people including six Asian women, reminds us that places where women work, especially women of color, are particularly vulnerable to gun violence and mass shootings,” she said.
“As lawmakers, we must do more to prevent all-too-common everyday gun violence in Vermont,” she said.
