The issue of guns in hospitals has been shelved by the Vermont House of Representatives, which declined this session to take up a proposed ban.
While the Senate passed the legislation, S.30, in mid-March, it remained untouched in the House Committee on Judiciary. Now, leadership in the upper chamber has said that, although the proposal will not cross the finish line this year, it will be carefully considered in the second year of the biennium.
The bill would also set up a legislative study of whether to prohibit firearms from the Capitol Complex in Montpelier.
Speaker of the House Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, told VTDigger in a recent interview she waited until 2022 to examine the Senate’s proposal to give lawmakers the chance to interrogate the issue of gun violence in the state and try to come up with potential solutions.
“That conversation takes and requires time, and I think that potentially having that conversation in person may be a little bit easier,” Krowinski said. “I think we need to just take — hit pause and look at the greater picture of how guns are impacting Vermonters and what are the right policy responses to address it.”
Rep. Maxine Grad, D-Moretown, who chairs the House Committee on Judiciary, said Monday that her panel had received a preliminary run-through of the firearms ban and that she looked “forward to considering it when we get back in January.”
“We’ve done a lot of work in my committee this session, and there are often bills that we can’t get to,” Grad said as she explained why S.30 had been put on hold until 2022.
“I want to make sure that I give it thoughtful consideration and — hoping we’ll be back in person in January — that we can give it the time it needs and all voices are heard,” she said.
The decision by the House to take its time with the bill comes after the Senate drastically whittled it down from the original proposal, which also would 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 measure 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.
There was support in the Senate to move the proposal in its limited form — banning firearms in hospitals — with lawmakers citing 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.
Sen. Phil Baruth, D/P-Chittenden, the lead sponsor of the bill, said Monday he had been hopeful the House judiciary panel would have moved the proposal this year.
“It was designed as a bill that any reasonable person would agree with, and that the governor would need to sign — that he would not be able to find reasons to avoid signing,” Baruth said.
Baruth said he views the provision mandating a study into possibly banning firearms in the Statehouse and other government buildings as “emergency review.”
Throughout the legislative session, Baruth has repeatedly said that the Jan. 6 Capitol riots in Washington, D.C., have brought more urgency to the idea of strengthening security around the Vermont Statehouse.
“I think it’s very short-sighted of us to put that off for another year,” he said. “But again, that’s one senator’s opinion.”
