Despite the veil of social concern, H.230 is flagrantly aimed at gun rights, not suicide prevention. If Vermont’s progressive supermajority rams it into law, it will almost certainly be struck down as unconstitutional.
The Senate Education Committee is moving forward with a bill, S.138, which is an Education School Safety bill on safety measures. This bill only addresses a sixteenth of the larger problem.
Rep. Alyssa Black, D-Westford, made an emotionally-charged, first-person appeal to her House colleagues during a lengthy floor speech Wednesday afternoon in support of H.230, the suicide prevention/gun control bill.
In considering the intersection of suicide and firearms, it is has been suggested that more firearms in circulation would mean an increase in suicide by firearm. This does not prove to be true in Vermont.
The Vermont House on Wednesday preliminarily approved H.230, a bill that would place restrictions on gun storage and require a 72-hour waiting period on gun purchases. The House will vote for final approval on Thursday.
President Joe Biden has ushered in a litany of restrictive gun control measures since taking office in 2021, but many of his initiatives are now tied up in court, subject to congressional review or widely opposed by lawmakers.
A gun control bill purportedly for “implementing mechanisms to reduce suicide” was approved 7-3 last week by the House Human Services Committee and is up for House Judiciary Committee review Wednesday at 9 a.m.
Gun stores are closing at rapid rates after the Biden administration implemented a “zero tolerance” policy for gun dealers and added updated language to define what can be classified as a “willful” violation, leaving Federal Firearm License (FFL) revocations at a 16-year high.
Earlier this month, John Lott, an economist, political commentator and gun rights advocate, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the history of past assault weapons bans in the United States.
An Oregon judge ruled Wednesday that local governments can not declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries, further saying that the sheriffs that implemented a Second Amendment ordinance were embracing “racist and white nationalist ideologies.”
Republican Montana Gov. Gregory Gianforte sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland Thursday, saying that Montana will not enforce the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) final rule for pistol braces.
The bill would make straw purchases — when a person buys a gun for someone who can’t, already a federal offense — illegal in Vermont. And it would criminalize defacing a gun’s serial number and bar people under 21 from possessing semi-automatic firearms.