 All right, well, we're here this morning taking up S30, which is a bill that would prohibit carrying, having firearms in certain buildings, including hospitals. And I believe that's why Dr. Sexton is here to talk to us on behalf of the Vermont Medical Society. Dr. Welcome, I'm Dick Sears, I share the committee. I'll let the rest of the committee introduce themselves starting with the vice chair. Good morning, Dr. Sexton, I'm Phil Baruth, I represent Chittenden County. Good morning, Joe. Hi, I'm Jeanette White, I represent Wyndham County. Good morning. Hi, I'm Alice Nidka, I represent Windsor County and a couple of towns out of the county. Good morning, Doc, I'm Joe Benning, I represent Caledonia County District, which is all of Caledonia County and the six northeastern most towns in Orange County. Good morning. And we have, usually we're sitting around a table and not feeling it's easy to go introducing by order. My visual of who's in what chair is different from what he else. Anyway, Dr. Welcome to Senate Judiciary, look forward to you. Thank you, yes, good morning. I am, so my name is Dr. Ryan Sexton, I'm a Vermont licensed emergency physician. I practice clinically at Northeastern Vermont Regional Hospital in St. John'sbury. I serve as vice president of the Vermont Medical Society, also president of the Vermont chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians. And I'm the medical director at NBRH of the emergency department and immediate past president of the medical staff there. I'm here speaking today on behalf of the Vermont Medical Society in full support of S30 and the prohibition of firearms in hospitals. Aside from responding law enforcement officers, no one should be admitted to carry firearms in hospitals. It's my understanding that most Vermont hospitals share this opinion and have internal policies banning firearms on hospital grounds. And while this hospital level ban is appropriate, I do feel that the seeds support our hospitals and our healthcare workers in legislating this ban across the state. I work with a caring team of nurses and physicians in a challenging and unpredictable environment. We never know what's gonna come in and show up on our door. We treat everyone with every condition, with the goal of doing as much as we can to reach individual patient. Our environment can be emotionally charged at times. Unfortunately, it's not uncommon for our frontline staff to face verbal threats and physical assaults even from patients and visitors. Our frontline staff are at high risk of injury. I'd like to share a personal example. A few months ago, I took care of a young man in his 20s. He had new onset of acute and severe psychosis in schizophrenia. Working with our mental health partners, it was determined that he could not safely be discharged home from the emergency department. He would require inpatient psychiatric treatment. So while he was being held in RED, awaiting that transfer, I did meet with the young man's parents to explain his situation and the treatment plan. And upon hearing of his son's condition and the plan to transfer him, the patient's father became quite upset, frustrated. And I'll never forget this. He stated very clearly, if you put my son in the hospital, I will come after you and your children. It was clear that he meant this. Security immediately responded. Thankfully, their office was right next door to where I was meeting the family. He was escorted off the campus. And fortunately, in this case, he was not carrying a firearm, but had he been armed, I do believe this incident would have ended differently. There have been other concerning incidents at NVRH and other hospitals around the state in hearing from my emergency medicine partners around the state, where for example, in RED waiting room, I had a patient present intoxicated, brandishing a firearm with threatening behavior. Again, this incident was de-escalated by security and fortunately, luckily no one was harmed. This is the level of threat that we face in our practice. We have unfortunately experienced the 2018 fatal shooting. I'm sure you're all aware of the dart of involving a firearm. And just yesterday, I read of another fatal shooting of a physician at a healthcare facility in Texas. We have been fortunate to not have similar in Vermont recently, but we remain at risk. I feel that Vermont should do more to mitigate this risk. S-30 will protect patients and their loved ones. It will protect frontline nurses and physicians. And I urge you all to please vote in favor of this bill and support improving safety in our hospitals across the state. Senator Baruch. Thank you very much, doctor. I appreciate the testimony. I'm wondering, the pandemic presents its own medical challenges. Overlaying that, unfortunately, are political challenges where there's been a, I would say, under the past administration in the White House, there was a pitting of scientists and medical professionals against people who declared themselves promoters of freedom or liberty. And that has in other states produced additional friction in medical environments. Are you seeing that here at all? Is there an incidence of people who are upset about masking or restrictions due to COVID? Yes, absolutely. What does that look like? Yeah, I mean, I distinctly recall a conversation I had with my CEO a few months back where a patient was irate calling frequently and complaining about the mask requirement. This was early in the pandemic. I don't know if that patient's upset. More recently, I know that with the visitation policies that we've put in place to protect patients and staff, as well as visitors, patients have been quite frustrated with that. And we're doing all that we can to connect to patients and their families. I can't tell you the number of calls I make in my shifts now where in the past, we'd have visitors with patients and I could go in and speak with them. Or as I discussed in this case, out in the waiting room. Now we're having to use a phone and try and actually to implement video conferencing with family. Thank you. Senator White. Thank you, doctor. I guess my question is not, should there be a prohibition against firearms in hospitals? But what should be the penalty for it? And this creates it as a criminal offense with resulting in a criminal record for the person who maybe even inadvertently brings their sidearm in because they carry it all the time. So I guess my question is, if there were another way to enforce this without a criminal penalty, would that satisfy the need? I can't really speak to the penalty. I would hope that with a ban, that alone from the state level may dissuade people from bringing firearms to hospitals. I don't know what the repercussions of that should be but I think that it should be clear and supported. Our hospitals, as I said, is my hospital and I know many have internal policies banning this. But I think they would benefit from the protection of a gun law for prohibiting. Thank you. Senator Benning. Well, doc, I'm not sure we've ever actually met before but I'm on your board of corporators. And the last corporators meeting I went to, I walked into the building past the sign that said, no firearms. If Bobby Clark is in the security booth, who's a deputy sheriff by the way for the rest of the day. Okay, thank you. I didn't know who Bobby Clark was. Okay, well, he's one of several who actually occupy the security booth at the hospital. If an individual walks into the building now and is carrying a firearm, are all staff authorized to say to that person, you must leave and not come back with that firearm? Yeah, this presents a bit of a conflict. As I said, in emergency medicine, we treat everyone and we have to treat everyone. Everyone who comes to the door. And so, if someone were to come in and when they've come in with weapons, I personally would not feel comfortable addressing it. I know many of my nurses would not feel comfortable addressing it. I believe I would involve Bobby Clark in security and say, we have a patient who ignored the sign and I'd like you to please address the issue. So, I'm not sure that I quite understand the need for a law that creates a criminal offense. If you have the ability now to eject someone from the premises. If somebody's coming in with nefarious intent, I'm not sure that sign or any law is going to dissuade them from doing whatever the act is, but I'm trying to wrap my head around why we would develop a new criminal offense. And let me give another example. If a person comes in with a gunshot wound from a hunting accident and is brought into the emergency room by somebody who is actually carrying a side piece from when they were out hunting, you are automatically creating a criminal offense for that individual and they had no nefarious intent whatsoever. You still have the ability to ask them to take the firearm outside, lock it in the car, but you haven't created a blanket criminal offense for that person. And so I guess I'm trying to struggle with this because you already have the ability to eject someone, but I'm getting real leery about bringing in a new criminal offense. That's just a comment. I have one other question for you. My primary care provider is Corner Medical, which is a part of the hospital system. Do you happen to know if they have a sign out front of their door as well? I do not know. They're not my primary care. I don't practice there. And I, the last time I heard them take notice, they may. Okay. In Bennington, it's a campus. So the entire campus is supposed to be weapon and immaculate free. So that's the sign in the office building. You were on the campus. Most of you were on the campus. Senator Bruce. Just speaking to Senator Benning's comments, someone would have to be charged in order to be criminally prosecuted. So if the state's attorney thought that it was an honest misunderstanding that someone had been wounded and it was found later that they had a weapon on their person, they wouldn't automatically go to jail or receive a criminal penalty. There would be discretion involved. The other thing I would say is that we do have criminal penalties now attached to school buildings and property and courthouses. And we have lived with that and that has come to seem a very common sense set of provisions. So this would add hospitals to that as well as government buildings. So it's not creating anything we don't already observe in our law. I understood the doctor to be saying that he thought it would have a beneficial effect in terms of sending out the message statewide that hospitals are places where it is no longer to be even considered bringing a weapon onto that property. Doctor, did you wanna comment or ask, ensure? Yes, I would agree with Senator Baruch. That is my position. Senator Nidka. I'm just wondering with regard to, you had said the policy or that you think that the policy should be that no firearms allowed on hospital grounds even. So presently it seems like places where someone does show up with a gun that people have been able to ask the person calmly, just say, if we don't wanna allow guns here, could you please take it out and lock it in your car? And of course the car will be parking on hospital grounds. So is it really that it's needed on grounds as well as in the building? Is that your thinking? Personally, I think within the facility structure would make sense to me that would allow people to have their firearms in there and secure in their vehicle. I know the argument and all that but the word knowing needs to be somewhere in this bill. I think I used the example when we first started discussing this. I went through TSA at the Albany Airport long before the COVID by the way. And I have a little knife that I use to hold my dollar bills and cash. So it's a cashier and they caught it as I went through security and they took it. I had no intention of bringing a knife in the airport or onto the plane. So I mean, it was simply I lost it. So I think as we go forward with this bill, it's knowingly, I think the person you described hunting and the person accidentally shot didn't even realize their thoughts were all with their friend who just got shot. And they didn't realize they had a gun on them. I think they would probably be very calm about the whole thing. And you know, please take the gun out of here. I realize you didn't even know you had it. We've got them now. So I think that's an important thing. I've been struggling with this bill and I understand the arguments by some that, you know, if I don't have a gun to defend, I need the gun to defend myself if somebody comes in, this is only gonna stop good people bringing guns in, not to those in the deck. I just struggled with this as Senator Baruth just mentioned. It's been going on in the courthouses for a long time. Most of the old hospitals I'm familiar with have some form of security. So I'm struggling with, I know the argument about certain government buildings. I've heard that, I don't understand the hospitals. I don't think it's a problem with firearms. I'm in there for something else, seeing the emergency in the emergency room. I don't want to have to worry about somebody else. Senator White, you're muted, Senator White. I'm trying to be a good committee member and not make noise, but thank you. I would like to ask the doctor, in terms of sending a message, I understand that there might be more force to more of a message to the public if it were a statewide prohibition. I guess my question is, does that prohibition need to be a criminal offense? I struggle with this bill also and because I don't want to create more crimes and more people with criminal records. And so would a civil violation be a prohibition with a civil violation as a result? Send the same message. It would be a statewide prohibition, but it would be a civil offense as opposed to criminal. Yeah, again, I'm sorry that I just, I can't speak to what the offense should be. I just, I think that there should be a very clear message and that that would be what my request would be. I just will make the comment about that we have it in schools and courthouses and that their criminal offense is there. And were we having this discussion, were I involved in the discussion now about courthouses and schools? I might have the same concerns about it being criminal or civil. So thank you. Senator Bruce. Yeah, just to tie on to what Jeanette just said, that's one of my, actually one of my fears about the committee exploring a civil penalty for this. And I'll explain what I mean. When we decriminalized marijuana, we started by making it not a criminal offense, but a civil offense. And the message was very clear. We were stepping down the amount of scrutiny and the amount of punishment. And I worry that we would be inadvertently here. First of all, we'd be creating two tiers, one for schools and courthouses, one for hospitals and government buildings. That wouldn't necessarily make sense. And eventually somebody will say, well, let's decriminalize schools and courthouses and make those civil offenses. And that is exactly the wrong direction for us to be moving in. It's completely contrary to the spirit of this bill, which is to say guns have become an overwhelming problem in our society at certain places and moments. The Capitol insurrection being the most recent, but also in government buildings around the country and as we've heard in hospitals. So I think the idea that we would send the message that we're adopting a lesser penalty than we've previously put in place for schools and courthouses, that seems a dangerous move to me. I think we should, we're kind of arguing about the bill with a witness from the Medical Society. I further hear from the witnesses his thoughts and that of other docs. Yeah, you know, I would just add that a few years ago, I recall looking at the school bill law and wondering why that was not this case for hospitals as well. I went so far as actually to make that law and substitute out school for hospital, just to, you know, and then proposed it and sent it to some legislators to see if that were something they want to pursue. So I was very happy to see this bill come into discussion. And it does make sense to me that that level that schools are afforded would be also afforded to a hospital. Senator Benning and then Senator White. One of the rationales behind one component of this bill was the concept of somebody coming into the hospital with a gun to raid the pharmaceutical department. And I'm curious to know whether you have any evidence of that ever happening in the state of Vermont. I do not, I would not know that. With respect to the Dartmouth situation, my understanding of that was a son brought a weapon in and killed his mother. Do you happen to know what her diagnosis was at the time? I believe if I recall, it's been a while, but I believe it was a brain aneurysm, I think. Okay, thank you. So I guess I'm up, in terms of extending it to, I don't see any reason for guns in hospitals, but should we also extend it to urgent care centers? There are urgent care centers around the state, we have one in Brownborough. And if one of the reasons was for the pharmaceuticals, should we extend it to pharmacies? Yeah, I can speak to the urgent care or as we have at Corner Medical and the Northeast Kingdom Express care facilities. Yeah, I do think that they probably have a similar threat. They're not dealing with as much typically life or death situations with high emotions, emotionally charged environment. Patients aren't typically staying there for prolonged periods of time. They're not seeing the acute psychiatric illness and intoxications that we see presenting to emergency departments. So I do think it's a different level of risk, but there is a risk there as well. And in terms of the, I can't remember the definition of the terms of the hospital here, but does this include the retreat and the state psychiatric hospital in Berlin? Are they considered hospitals under this? Eric might be able to answer that or the sponsor. Okay. Well, you're a sponsor maybe. Well, I am a sponsor, but yes, I was a sponsor. There is a cross-reference to VSA. Yeah, I just can't remember what that is. 1902. I can't remember either. I can't remember what that definition is. That's the definition of licensing for hospitals. So any hospital that needs to be licensed would fall under that. Whether that would include an urgent care center, I think it would include... They have to be licensed, right? But licensed by who? By the state. Well, okay. I guess we should... Can we focus on the witnesses? Yeah. Well, he probably didn't drive a long distance to be with us today, but he is taking time out of his busy day to be with us. So maybe we could focus on the witness and then discuss the merits of the bill or what's in the bill and what's not in the bill. Are there other questions for the Dr. Sexton? Dr. Ribi, have you heard from any doctors who are say opposed to this bill from the medical society? I have not. And I have not heard from any doctors, emergency room docs in my area in Bennington, Dr. Dodson or anyone else who's opposed to the bill. No, I think for the... We would adhere to our internal hospital policy, which is to ourselves not carry firearms in the hospital. The concern would be that others visiting our hospital don't know that internal policy. Okay, other questions for Dr. Sexton? Dr, thanks so much for being with us today. I appreciate it. No, thank you for having me. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Now we could continue a little discussion for a few minutes if you want. We're about five minutes left. I've scheduled the commissioner at DCF next week on this bill because we haven't really talked about childcare facilities in a sense. They license probably a year. And then more committee discussion on it, but I have a hard time with the hospitals and not having some law. And I really want to look at whether it's beefing up our unlawful trustless laws or whatever, could a, how can a hospital deal with somebody without this law? They already are. There's a sign out front that says, don't bring a weapon in. If a weapon is brought in, there's an argument that's been made. They have the ability to eject them. And if they are ejected and choose to come back in, they are now violating a notice against trespass, which is in fact a criminal offense. So why are we adding on something else? Dick, could I ask if Eric could, we've referenced this for days and days and we haven't let Eric address it. There's a whole argument that's been laid out about 3705 and it seems like having Eric give us his opinion would be. If he's prepared at this time, if he'd rather wait until next Wednesday, I'm fine with that too. Oh, it's fine. It's similar to the email that I had sent committee members. And you know, it's roughly, roughly similar to what Senator Benning is saying and what the commissioner said. I was drawing a distinction between, I think last week the committee had been told that simply coming into the hospital, or a store or any place that's posted a sign that says no firearms allowed, that a person who then comes on the premises with a firearm is trespassed. And that I do not agree with that. I don't think that's the case. The trespass is an entrance upon land after being directed not to do so, after being ordered either to leave or not to come out. It does not have to do with what you can or cannot do while you're on the property. So if someone comes on into a hospital or into a store that has posted the fact that there's no firearms permitted, someone will then somehow have to have an interaction with that person and inform him or her that they have to leave and that they're not permitted on the property anymore. If at that time the person either refuses to leave or as Senator Benning said, goes out and comes back in after being ordered not to do so, at that point they've committed a trespass. And so at that point law enforcement could be called or if it's a place like a hospital where securities are already there, they can inform the person or charge the person with the trust, I guess I don't think there's, I don't know whether law enforcement is also present at a hospital, whether it's private security, I don't know, but they certainly could be arrested at that point. I think you may recall the commissioner talking about a rule three, the rule is a criminal procedure as to when a person can be arrested. If they're committing a misdemeanor in the presence of an officer, they can be arrested. So I think that if the person is continuing on they are committing the trespass misdemeanor and they can be arrested, that's only after the communication, that's the difference between the bill and the trespass situation. The bill doesn't require that interim communication between someone at the hospital or someone at the store to go up to the person and say, you can't be on the property anywhere. If the bill under the proposal of the bill, a person who's on the grounds with a firearm has immediately committed the unlawful act. So there's no need for anyone on staff or who works at the facility to talk to the person. They could just call on portion right then and say there's somebody here who's violated the law, gets being here with a firearm. Can you please come and arrest him? And if I might, Mr. Chair. Go ahead. No, I'm just, Eric, if we could research Brattleboro Court, they ran into problems because the Brattleboro Court went to private security without arrest powers. So they were frequently needing to call the Brattleboro Police Department, which is next door to the courthouse, luckily, to come over and deal with cases that were not compliant with the rules or the law. I shouldn't say rules or law. So maybe we should kind of research that and what happened. Maybe because it didn't happen in the presence of an officer, it happened in the presence of a security. Now, my hospital security is not with us, it's security. Actually, it's not next door. Now, it's about three miles away. Okay, well, they haven't traveled. But they don't have law enforcement ability, that's true. They can't arrest anybody, they can just detain them. Right, so go ahead, Phillip. I just wanted to mention that that's already a case in Brattleboro who can get some information from the police there. So I just want to ask, is it possible then for a hospital or a business to adopt any condition that they want? For instance, there was a case a few weeks ago where a guy pulled a gun on someone who wore a mask into his store because he was very, very anti-mask and he had a condition that you couldn't come into his store with a mask. And then somebody did and he pulled a gun on them and told them they had to leave. Can you create any condition and then no matter how disputed that condition and then have it fall under the no trespassing ordinance? Couldn't some of you argue? Yeah, I think you couldn't, for example, set out rules in a sign or in any other manner that were themselves discriminatory or against the law, for example, or against the Constitution. You couldn't, for example, say, well, persons of a certain race or ethnicity or religion can't come in here. Well, that's my point. To go back to Joe's contention from the last time we talked about this, there are people who very fervently believe it's their constitutional right to carry a weapon into these places. And right now they can point to the fact that there is no state law against it. And I feel like sometimes we acknowledge that but in this discussion of trespassing, we're acting like that wouldn't be a real problem but that was one of the reasons I had for putting the bill forward is that people stand on their constitutional grounds whether regardless of where they're told to leave with their weapon and then it strengthens the hand of the people who are trying to remove them if there's a state law as opposed to a hospital prohibition or a little restaurant in Burlington that puts up a sign that says you can't have a gun here. I can foresee a standoff where somebody would say you Joe Blow who own this little taco stand don't have the right to tell me I can't have my gun in here as opposed to a state law that says X, Y, or Z. Not talking about taco stands. No, no, but what, well, if Eric is right then what he's saying is that any private establishment could do that. Including a taco stand. And then they could charge no trespass. Right, but my point is that that will not be automatically honored because we have a second amendment rights group that doesn't acknowledge the primacy of their private regulation. I would respectfully disagree with you there Phillip because we've had two witnesses who represent gun groups say specifically they acknowledge that a private institution has the right to ban them from bringing a weapon inside. Okay, then let me just call that bluff. Let's put a language in this trespassing statute that says exactly what you just said and they will oppose it tooth and nail. Why would you do that? I mean, right now if I put a no trespass up that says on my property no trespass period I have the right to do that for any reason. I don't want anybody. You do because it's your property. Right. If you walk past a sign that says no shirts, not allowed and you're not wearing a shirt when you go in past that sign does the owner of that property have the right to eject you? I would argue yes, they do. They have the ability to eject you giving you the notice against trespass. I acknowledge Eric is correct that there has to be some interaction. But when you're given that notice against trespass you are now subjecting yourself to a criminal offense. Did you hear? In violation of a notice against trespass. What Chris Bradley was saying. When this bill came about I was extremely nervous. I start always with the premise that I have a constitutional right which we're all sworn to protect first and foremost. I understood with respect to the hospitals that there was a concern about people coming in with a weapon and stealing from the pharmacies. We don't have any evidence of that whatsoever. No, it wasn't stealing from the pharmacies, Joe. That was what I heard is one of the excuses for the bill. That was for me and that was an actual case that I had heard of. That wasn't from a pharmacy downtown. It was from the hospital pharmacy. They were asking for drugs in the hospital and they had a firearm. And I just want- But by itself, Dick, that is a criminal offense. If you are using the weapon with intent to get something you are already in violation of a criminal law. The hospitals have come in and testified with the exception of the doctor we heard from the hospital. The hospitals have come in and said, we have the signs out front of all buildings. There hasn't been any evidence that I have heard thus far that somebody has violated that signage. Yes, we did hear a testimony. No. Yes. What I heard was if somebody came in, they were ejected. No, the Dartmouth incident, they violated the policy. Philip, the Dartmouth incident involves a son shooting his mother who had a brain aneurysm. And while I understand that is a problem, by itself, his actions were criminal. Whether he came into the hospital or not, it did not prevent him from committing the act. This is a very interesting discussion. We've got about three minutes before the floor action. We need to go from Zoom to Zoom. And that is, Chris Bradley was having it both ways. He was saying that, of course, any establishment can invoke a criminal prohibition against having a firearm. But at another moment, if you listen to him, he was very clear that he believes you have the right to concealed carry anywhere. You do. You do. You do. But no, if there's a, you can't concealed carry in a courthouse and you can't concealed carry on school grounds because there's a state law against possessing the firearm. So that's what we're talking about. According to my iPad, there's now 1126. That gives us four minutes to get to the place. We better go. Vanessa likes us to go early. I suggest that this is adjourned.