Updated on June 11, 2019.
Gov. Phil Scott on Monday vetoed a 24-hour waiting period for handgun sales in Vermont and signed a bill protecting a woman’s right to an abortion.
The legislature passed S.169 to create a cooling-off period to reduce acts of impulsive gun violence, especially suicides. But Scott, citing a number of other gun restrictions he has signed, said he didn’t think the new bill hit the mark.
“With these measures in place, we must now prioritize strategies that address the underlying causes of violence and suicide,” Scott said in a statement. “I do not believe S.169 addresses these areas.”
Scott had until midnight Monday to either sign the bill, veto it or allow it to become law without his signature.
After the move, the family of Andrew Black released a statement blasting the decision. The 23-year-old Essex man shot and killed himself in December, hours after buying a gun.
“While we know this bill would not save everyone, by disrupting access to the most lethal method, it would have saved some,” Black’s parents, Rob and Alyssa Black, wrote in a statement. “This bill would have saved our son, it could have saved yours.”
The pair had lobbied legislators hard for the change and said they were “deeply disappointed” that Scott “went political.”
Legislators initially proposed a 48-hour waiting period to include all guns, but cut that period in half and removed rifles from the bill as a compromise.
California, Illinois and Rhode Island are among the states that have established waiting periods in law.
Senate President Pro Tempore Tim Ashe (D/P-Chittenden) released a statement lamenting the governor’s decision to block a “common sense step forward” on gun safety.
“Governor Scott’s veto is massively disappointing,” Ashe wrote.
Ashe pointed out that, while the governor proposed instead to tackle mental health, childhood poverty and addiction issues, those strategies “scarcely registered” in his recent budgets.
House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) issued a similar statement, noting that, unlike other forms of attempted suicide, 90 percent of attempts involving guns are successful.
“It is clear that the Governor’s disengaged approach to policy is not working for Vermont or for Vermonters,” Johnson wrote. “I hope to see him engage with lawmakers as legislation is developed next session.”
Because of the hurried way the general assembly adjourned this legislative session, lawmakers will not have a summer session to try to override any gubernatorial vetoes. Their next opportunity to do so will be when the legislature reconvenes in January.
The deadline for Scott to sign or veto another closely watched bill, H.57, was coming up Tuesday.
“Like many Vermonters, I have consistently supported a woman’s right to choose, which is why today I signed H.57 into law,” Scott wrote. “This legislation affirms what is already allowable in Vermont — protecting reproductive rights and ensuring those decisions remain between a woman and her health care provider.”
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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“No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” Thomas Jefferson, Virginia Constitution, Draft 1, 1776
“The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed.” Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Cartwright, 5 June 1824
“I ask who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people, except a few public officers.” George Mason, Address to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 4, 1788
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. A well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the best and most natural defense of a free country.” James Madison, I Annals of Congress 434, June 8, 1789
“A militia when properly formed are in fact the people themselvesand include, according to the past and general usuage of the states, all men capable of bearing arms” Richard Henry Lee, Federal Farmer No. 18, January 25, 1788
“This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. The right of self defense is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.” St. George Tucker, Blackstones Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1803
“The Constitution shall never be construed to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms.” Samuel Adams, Massachusetts Ratifying Convention, 1788
The people gave the government a set, limited scope of powers in the Constitution. Anything not allowed specifically is not something the government can do constitutionally.
The bill of rights was placed there after, because they had worried that people would eventually think of this backwards. The government has unenumerated powers, the people have specific rights.
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Why did the Constitution need to be amended to ban alcohol?
Did you read the preamble to the bor and the ninth and tenth?
The Constitution limits a specific group of powers to the government. The bor was added a few years later, out of fear that people like you would deliberately misinterpret it. The bor says that.
You should read the previous drafts of the 2a. You should read the other ways he wrote it, in the Constitution of Virginia and elsewhere.
It’s painfully clear what they were saying.