By Guy Page
A bill critics say infringes on the right to buy and carry firearms has been approved by a House committee and now goes to the full House for a vote.
S30 prohibits carrying guns in hospitals, extends the background check waiting period to up to 30 days, and allows health care providers to tell police their patient is planning to buy a gun.
S30 has already been approved by the Senate. Yesterday was approved by the Vermont House Judiciary Committee and now goes to the full House of Representatives. It is on today’s Notice Calendar of the Vermont House Journal, meaning it could come up for a full House vote as soon as tomorrow. If approved in the House, it will be returned to the Senate for review of bill changes made in the House.
One of these House changes proposed by Rep. William Notte (D-Rutland) – requiring firearms dealers to wait up to 30 days for a federal background check before providing a gun to a buyer – was criticized by the National Rifle Association yesterday.
“Expanding the default proceed time frame on NICS-delayed checks from 3 days to 30 days is arbitrary and unnecessary. There has been no justification offered as to why the delay should be expanded tenfold,” Darin Goens, State Director for the NRA-ILA, wrote in a Jan. 25 letter entered into committee testimony. “These individuals, at this point, are not prohibited persons, and they are being denied a constitutional right.”
Goens warned that S30 “is the very definition of a proverbial solution in search of a problem,” noting that “there is no evidence that arbitrary boundaries enhance public safety or that there is currently a problem with respect to Vermont hospitals” and that existing trespass laws provide hospital security and police all the tools they need to keep unwanted gun-toters off the premises.
Another House change in S30 gives all ‘health care providers’ new powers to alert police about a perceived danger to public safety if a patient is in the process of buying a gun.
Legislative Council lawyer Erik Fitzpatrick defined “Health care provider” as “a person, partnership, corporation, facility, or institution, licensed or certified or authorized by law to provide professional health care service in this State to an individual during that individual’s medical care, treatment, or confinement.”
Previous Vermont Daily Chronicle coverage of S30, including critique by Vermont pro-Second Amendment groups:
Gun rights advocates say hospital carry ban not needed
Gun Owners of VT set to testify against hospital gun ban bill
Categories: Gunrights
This bill has morphed into something so different from what the Senate sent to the House, that the original intent (which was questionably necessary it’s self) is now a secondary consideration. Gun control in the formerly free state of Vermont is a threat to all freedoms, as if this kind of bastardization of an original bill has, can, and will be employed again and again as long as free people allow it. The difference between a free citizen and a subjugated serf is our ability, and willingness to defend our freedoms .
I have been coming to Vermont for over thirty years. Spend half the year there. Married here. My children have been raised here. We respect the Vermont traditions and people. I waited 30 Years to retire in Vermont. I am four years away and am most likely going to sell our family house that has been in our family forever and move to another state other than vermont. I live in NYC and Vermont is becoming just as radical if not more. What a disgrace this state is becoming! Across the board. Not just this bill.
Your feelings are understandable but don’t blame Vermont or Vermonters. The primary anti-gun agitators, Prince Philip Baruth and Martin “I’m a gun owner too” Lalonde are both flatlanders who’ve come here to save us from ourselves.
Robert, Bingo in the front row ! You hit that nail squarely on the head ! Anybody who doubts the influence of “urban refugees” (flatlanders) on the politics in the State of Vermont need only check put the Legislative “Face Book” published by the state every year. There is a short bio on every one of the legislators under the “Golden Dumb”. Most say where the Legislator was born, went to school, etc. Of course some don’t think that is any of our business, and therefor do not include this. The last I knew about 2/3rds of each branch were not born, raised, and/or educated here, these “formative” years were imprinted elsewhere.
While the claim to end “The Charleston Loophole” is concerning enough, The attempt to further regulate and restrict firearms by using a “healthcare provider” to report possible “issues”. This is unacceptable legislation and ripe for abuse. Such legislation is in direct conflict of Chapter 1 Articles 4,11 and 16,of the Vermont Constitution. Truly another knee-jerk reaction by the legislature to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, in spite of the socialist’s attempts to fool you otherwise.
It is interesting to note that UVMMC yesterday for a VT Digger story said the quiet part out loud:
50% of UVMMC’s ER beds were occupied by patients having mental health issues. Vermont legislators talk a whole lot about mental health, but action seems elusive. Yet, the legislature seems to demand that any Healthcare provider can instantly become a mental health counselor in this bill,
if it serves their agenda.
I wonder why these committees and legislators even take testimony from those experts in the subject who disagree with them? Answer, It’s all theater. These anti-American freedom haters already have their minds made up before the hearings start. Which freedom is next to be stolen from us by those who take an oath to defend and not harm our constitution then propose laws that do. Their oaths are worthless and dishonest. Most of these people don’t believe in the bible so holding their hand on one I’m surprised they’re not burned.
Wait! In “Godfather II”, one of the bodyguards attempted to SMOTHER Hyman Roth in the hospital; can we add something about banning pillows as there may be no one to thwart a smothering?
One more reason not to trust your doctor!!!
Where were all these concerned law makers like phil beruth when a felon with a gun killed a drug dealer in a Rutland motel. Or a shooter shot up the mall in So. Burlington and the state’s attorney general wanted to charge him as a youth…Conspicuously absent yet they want law abiding citizens to be denied our Constitutional rights!! These progressive socialists need to be voted out and not be hired by the state of Vermont like they did tim ashe at $92k a year!!
Tombstone AZ required wild cowboys to check their firearms with the Sheriff when entering town. My cousins Frank and Tom McLaury did. Whereupon Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday gunned them . down. Just sayin’.
Were they really unarmed at that shootup at the corral?
This is frightening on several levels. Opens the door to denial of the 2nd Amendment.
King Phillip opened that door in 2018. The safest state in the country with no gun control since 1791. And the king is from Vermont but not a republican and threw his support behind Joe Biden, worst president in modern time and beyond.
The mere number of bills posted during a biennium (1284 last me thinks) is a good reason for our state legislature to convene every other year like other, non-freedom stealing state legislatures do in the Northeast, or the super-majority must be broken. God help us all!