A proposal to mandate waiting periods for gun purchases in Vermont faces an uncertain fate ahead of a Senate Judiciary Committee vote Friday.
Sen. Phil Baruth (D/P-Chittenden) sponsored the measure and is for it, while Sen. Joe Benning (R-Caledonia) plans to vote no. That leaves three Democrats — Sen. Dick Sears (D-Bennington), Sen. Alice Nitka (D-Windsor) and Sen. Jeanette White (D-Windham) — who have yet to state their positions on the legislation.
The votes of two undecideds will sway the outcome.
Baruth, who advocated for universal background checks for years before that policy became law in 2018, said he’s “not hard-selling anybody” on the bill.
“They’re going to look at the evidence and make up their minds, and we need two other votes,” Baruth said, adding that he believes the evidence clearly shows that waiting periods for gun sales could save lives. A second part of the bill would require guns to be safely locked up when not in the control of their owner.
White and Sears each said Thursday that they hadn’t decided whether they will support the bill. Nitka said she’d made up her mind but wouldn’t tip her hand to Seven Days. “I’m not telling you where I’m at,” she said.
Friday is an important day on the legislative calendar known as crossover, the deadline by which policy-related bills must be passed by least one committee. The deadline for money-related legislation is one week later.
Any measure without a committee approval by the deadline is unable to advance unless lawmakers vote to make an exception.
Sears, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair, said the panel plans to “vote some bills out” on Friday, but he didn’t specify whether he’d like to see Baruth’s gun legislation pass.
Baruth’s bill was inspired by the death of 23-year-old Andrew Black, an Essex man who shot and killed himself in December hours after passing a background check and purchasing a gun. In Black’s obit, his parents called for a waiting period on gun sales. They’re certain such a law could have saved their son’s life.
An analysis by Vermont Public Radio found that 89 percent of gun deaths in Vermont from 2011 through 2016 were the result of suicide.
Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) said he supports mandatory waiting periods as a means of reducing gun suicides in Vermont.
“I feel very strongly that we need to do what we can to reduce instances of suicide by firearm, especially for young people,” Ashe said. “I believe that a waiting period for firearm purchases will make a meaningful difference as people have a little bit of a cooling off period to get through situations which might be acute.”
If the bill is defeated in committee, Ashe suggested he could use his position as Senate president to force a vote on proposal.
“My hope is that by the end of tomorrow … that committee members will see what I have seen,” Ashe said. “And if the time comes and they have not reached that conclusion, then I’ll decide if I want to intervene to get that over [the line].”
Among committee members, only Baruth supports the “safe storage” component of the bill, according to Sears. The panel heard testimony that there are already “stiff penalties” for negligence that results in an injury, which gives prosecutors an avenue to charge people who are irresponsible with their firearms, Sears said.
Baruth acknowledged the weaker prospects of the safe storage concept, but said he’s hoping the committee will pass some version of his bill before the weekend.
“If you propose a multipart bill, you’re playing a fool’s game if you say, ‘I have to have everything I want or nothing,’” Baruth said.
He believes the bill would be worth passing even if the committee opts to remove a safe storage requirement, but he refused to speculate on the bill’s chances.
“Just have to trust and wait for the vote,” Baruth said.
Even if it does survive Friday’s committee vote, the bill’s passage is far from certain. Gov. Phil Scott said Thursday that he is “not enthusiastic” about passing new gun laws after passing a battery of reforms, including universal background checks and a ban on high-capacity magazines, in 2018.
Scott sympathized with families like the Blacks who have experienced firearms tragedies, but said he is “not sure that this [bill] fixes what they want to fix.”
The governor said he isn’t confident the legislation would provide any additional protection for the numerous Vermont households that already have guns in them.
Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly. Find our conflict-of-interest policy here: sevendaysvt.com/disclosure.
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But I want my gun now. I adopted a cat and had to wait a week for someone to come out to my house for a safety inspection before I could take her home. Heck. Even Amazon has a two day wait for their stuff.
The self-important poohbahs Baruth and Ashe are insufferable naieve elitists. Nowhere were gun laws more restrictive in a modern democratic republic than New Zealand and, predictably, those restrictions tragicallly served only to render law-abiding citizens defenseless when a lunatic psychopathic terrorist decided to massacre innocent worshipers in a mosque. Our 2nd amendment is NOT about hunting; it is there only to ensure a well-armed populace is prepared to thwart tyranny. As Dylan Thomas once observed: Neath the breast of every fuzzy-headed do-gooder beats the heart of a tyrant.
The state of Vermont has been in a hurry to impose laws in every instance of gun control in this state without regard for the actual facts…
https://www.facebook.com/groups/802GunTalk…
STOP CALLING IT “HIGH CAPACITY MAGAZINES” THEY ARE STANDARD IN MANY CASES.
Media formed term that is used to scare the general population
If you are looking to commit suicide suicide and the best way you can think of is to go out and buy a gun, you are not very creative. If you are an opioid addict It is probably because the politicians in Montpelier have screwed up the state so badly that your life sucks and you have few options.
Help get me out of this state.
I attended the hearing in Randolph Vermont the other night…
One thing that I gathered from that meeting is it a lot of people get up there stating that they believe a waiting. Will stop suicides or it is their understanding that this may prevent suicides or that someone said this may prevent suicides…
The actual facts are there was nothing that we can do to prevent suicides..
How many of the same people claiming to be experts can tell us if the people that died from overdoses actually just died from an overdose or did they want to terminate their life
I really don’t want to be driving down the road in a car full of friends when someone hell-bent on suicide has just found out they can’t buy a gun and uses a car
Does this happen… of course it does.
We need to stop infringing upon the rights of the law-abiding people at the hands of do-gooders who don’t have a clue what the answers are.
We need to get back to being a responsible Society where respect and responsibility are a burden of the person committing these acts not the rest of society.
I am sick of Vermont government taxing me to death and infringing upon my rights under the guise of trying to protect me..
I am a responsible lifelong taxpaying resident of the state of Vermont and I am disgusted that these people accepting money from Michael Bloomberg and George Soros can be bought and paid for to thoroughly destroy our great little State and the lives of hard-working tax-paying law-abiding Vermonters..
It is time to stop the intrusion of these out of state politicians into the lives of the people in the state of Vermont
What is important here is not the impact on murder and suicide in VT but to slowly erode the rights of gun owners. Since the state has transitioned from working class republicans in the 70’s to an entitled welfare society today we need to embrace all Democratic values. Little by little we can slowly move to more appropriate gun control laws in line with stares like HI and CT.
We must be very careful to do this slowly so as to not endanger the re election of our Governor Phil Scott . It is just not appropriate to allow unrestricted conceal carry here anymore
Tiki: That is not true. Many studies have been conducted on waiting periods. A study by researchers from the University of Cincinnati and Arizona State University published in 2012 found no measurable statistical effect on gun violence following the implementation of waiting period laws. A study published in 2000 in the Journal of the American Medical Association found no change in homicide rates subsequent to the implementation of waiting periods in conjunction with background checks for firearm purchases. The study indicated that these policies may be associated with a small reduction in the rate of gun suicide for those age 55 and older, but noted increases in other suicide methods in a possible substitution effect, resulting in no reduction in the rate of suicide overall A 2003 report from the Center for Disease Control found insufficient evidence for any determination that waiting periods measurably impact firearm fatalities, noting the inconsistent evidence of effectiveness, and limitations in design and execution of available studies. Of the research that has been done on the subject of waiting periods, the vast majority is in agreement that there is no, or very ambiguous evidence that these policies have caused any decrease in firearm-related deaths where they have been implemented.
“Research at the national level has produced no body of evidence indicating that mandated waiting periods for firearms purchases have caused reductions in either homicide or suicide rates in the states where they have been implemented.”
Strange. Conservatives – in tandem with the NRA – ensured no national-level research by cutting off funding for it. Perhaps there is a change of heart?
I strongly support this legislation and advise my senators to follow suit.
Research at the national level has produced no body of evidence indicating that mandated waiting periods for firearms purchases have caused reductions in either homicide or suicide rates in the states where they have been implemented. The preponderance of evidence generated by a large amount of research points toward the ineffectiveness of waiting periods for firearm purchases in reducing gun deaths. The evidence for any positive effect of a waiting period law in Vermont is negligible, and other policies have far more evidence indicating positive result from their implementation. Available evidence suggests no measurable effect from the implementation of a waiting period law, and virtual certainty that other suicide prevention policies recommended by mental healthcare providers and the Vermont Suicide Prevention Center, if pursued, would yield real, measurable and sustainable benefit to Vermonters in crisis.