The Vermont House will have a chance to weigh in on its own set of gun control measures next week, after a bill crafted in response to Vermont’s high and rising suicide rate passed largely unchanged through a second committee’s review on Friday. A separate bill with gun-related provisions is also on the move in the Senate.
The House bill, H.230, has three primary components: a new requirement for gun storage and accompanying criminal penalties in limited cases; a new route for family or household members to petition state courts for gun removal; and a new 72-hour gun purchase waiting period.
The House Judiciary Committee signed off on the legislation, which originated in the House Health Care Committee, on Friday morning with a 7-4 vote.
Rep. Barbara Rachelson, D-Burlington, summarized the balance that she said the bill struck between gun rights and public health.
“We’re not willy-nilly trying to take rights away from anyone,” said Rachelson, who voted for the measure. “But we are trying to do something that is going to make a difference and still allow people to enjoy being gun owners and hunters.”
For the past decade in Vermont, almost 90% of gun deaths have been suicides. The state’s suicide rate of 20.3 per 100,000 people is much higher than the national average of 14 per 100,000. In 2021, almost 60% of deaths by suicide in Vermont were by firearms, which the legislation describes as “unique in their ability to create instantaneous and irreversible outcomes.”
Legislators who voted in favor of the bill said there is evidence from other states that all three of the measures would reduce those numbers and save lives. “We are losing people to preventable deaths and quite frankly we need to do something,” said Rep. Will Notte, D-Rutland City.
Several opponents of the measure spoke before the vote, and said their belief that the bill runs afoul of the Constitution’s Second Amendment weighed heavily.
“It’s not that it’s not a problem that we are facing, but we have a Constitution that has set forth a right here,” said Joseph Andriano, D-Orwell, a lawyer and the sole non-Republican to oppose the bill, paraphrasing the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
A changing legal landscape
A case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in October has made the constitutional questions even murkier. The Bruen decision, as it’s known, overturned standards previously used by the courts to determine the constitutionality of limits on gun ownership and use.
State officials testifying before the judiciary committee gave widely diverging opinions on what should be done in the face of the legal uncertainty.
“This is a classic area or moment to consider a study group to weigh in,” said Rebecca Turner, who supervises public defender appeals for the state Office of the Defender General, in testimony on Thursday. She urged legislators “to explore other alternatives that are not so fraught with possible constitutional challenges in terms of addressing the policy goals.”
One part of the Senate bill, S.4, which would have prohibited Vermonters under age 21 from owning semiautomatic weapons, was removed before approval in that chamber’s judiciary committee due to concerns it would be found unconstitutional under the new interpretation. But other gun-related pieces remain.
One Senate bill provision would forbid defacing a firearm’s serial number and another would make “straw purchasing” a felony. In straw purchases, a person buys a firearm on behalf of someone who is prohibited from owning one or who intends to commit a crime with it.
Attorney General Charity Clark told the House Judiciary Committee that she was “enthusiastic” about the House bill and was prepared to defend its constitutionality in court, despite the recent change in the legal landscape.
“I am of the mind that if the Legislature waited for all the case law to resolve itself across the nation in every court, that you would be paralyzed and never pass a bill,” Clark testified on Thursday.
Youth hunters complicate storage provisions
The law likely to come before the House next week would require Vermonters with guns — 47% of households by one estimate — to store them locked and separate from ammunition in situations in which a child or an adult prohibited from having a gun would otherwise be able to access them.
Prohibited persons include those convicted of a violent crime or subject to court-ordered gun removal under an “extreme risk protection order.”
The requirement would not apply to residences or other places in which access by a child or prohibited person is not likely to occur. It also would not apply when the gun is with or near the owner or another authorized user.
However, a “child” in the bill is defined as anyone under the age of 18 and “authorized user” is defined as a person 18 and older. As a result, judiciary committee members spent several days debating how to ensure the new requirement would not affect Vermont’s long tradition of youth hunting and target shooting.
Hunting and shooting are frequently family affairs in Vermont. A person under 18 can legally purchase a firearm after completing a certified hunter safety course. Also, a parent or guardian can legally provide a firearm to a minor for his or her use.
Judiciary chair Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington, said he did not believe the requirement would apply once a gun was taken out to go hunting because the bill deals only with gun storage, not gun usage.
But concerns were raised in both the House judiciary and health committees about specific circumstances in which the requirement might come into play, particularly when youths under 18 are allowed to have access to stored guns.
“We’re going to want to keep it broad enough to protect people who have the right to go hunting and should have access,” said Rep. Ela Chapin, D-East Montpelier, on Wednesday.
The solution lawmakers found was this: No civil or criminal penalties would be applied except in cases in which a child or prohibited person’s access to the unlocked firearm results in its misuse.
If the firearm were improperly stored and the child or prohibited person used it in the commission of a crime or threatened someone with it, the charge for the gun owner would be a misdemeanor. The charge would be a felony if the firearm was used to cause death or serious bodily injury.
Chapin said she felt that the change acknowledged teenagers can and do access firearms stored in Vermont homes for hunting and target practice. “This makes it a little more palatable,” she said.
A few other changes were made to the bill by the judiciary committee. The proposed 72-hour waiting period was waived for gun shows for one year.
Also, a family or household member would still be able to petition the court directly to consider issuing an extreme risk prevention order, which allows law enforcement to remove firearms from someone considered a risk to themselves or others. Currently, only a state’s attorney can do that. In the bill’s new version, after the initial petition, the state attorney’s office becomes responsible for pursuing the order.
But no amount of tweaking would address the most comprehensive argument from gun rights advocates: the law’s potential infringement on a basic constitutional right.
“At best, at best, you’ve got a huge gray area,” said Chris Bradley, president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs. He warned that his organization and others would be bringing potentially costly legal challenges should the bill become law.
“Vermonters will pay for this, so I think we need to go into this with our eyes open,” he said.