Proposed waiting period for handgun purchases shot down by Legislature

Posted 2/20/20

State lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected a proposed bill last week that would have required citizens to wait three days before purchasing a handgun.

On Wednesday, 27 of the 30 members of the …

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Proposed waiting period for handgun purchases shot down by Legislature

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State lawmakers overwhelmingly rejected a proposed bill last week that would have required citizens to wait three days before purchasing a handgun.

On Wednesday, 27 of the 30 members of the Senate — including Sens. R.J. Kost, R-Powell, and Hank Coe, R-Cody — voted against considering the idea this budget session.

Coe said the bill threatened Wyomingites’ Second Amendment rights and that a three-day waiting period “has proven ineffective in other jurisdictions.”

Only two Democratic senators voted in favor of introducing Senate File 80, with one senator excused.

Sen. Chris Rothfuss, a Laramie Democrat and the bill’s lead sponsor, said the goal behind the waiting period was to help prevent suicides.

“It might save a life … and that’s really what this bill is trying to do, to save one life, save two lives, to save a few,” he argued on the Senate floor.

Handguns are not only one of the most common items used in suicides, they’re also among the most lethal methods, Rothfuss noted. By making someone wait to get a gun, he said the delay might prevent a person from taking their own life in a brief period of passion. That would give them another chance to find counseling and other support — and survive.

“This is about trying to find and identify solutions for our people,” Rothfuss said, noting that Wyoming has the third-highest suicide rate in the country.

“Over the 10 years that I’ve been in the Legislature … we’ve had close to the top, close to the highest in suicide rates all of those years,” he said, “and really little action’s been taken that has addressed that.”

Rothfuss added that, “This is not about trying to take anyone’s guns away, prevent someone from having that firearm.”

However, some gun rights advocates didn’t see it that way.

The group Wyoming Gun Owners fired off a message to its supporters before the session started, warning that “terrible lawmakers” had “snuck in” Senate File 80 and were “hoping to ram gun control into law here in Wyoming, before gun owners can get organized.”

“This is madness, as it only means that the very people who need to buy a handgun (think of a woman who is in fear of a dangerous stalker) would be unable to do so because of state law!” wrote Aaron Dorr, a policy adviser for the gun group.

Dorr also charged that multiple Republicans were joining “the radical left in Cheyenne” on the bill, though only one member of the GOP, Rep. Dan Furphy of Laramie, signed on as a co-sponsor.

All three of the bill’s sponsors, Rothfuss, Furphy and Rep. Cathy Connolly, a Democrat, hail from Laramie. Rothfuss said on the Senate floor that the bill had been supported by Laramie High School students associated with the movement “March for Our Lives.” Formed in the wake of the February 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, the national group’s stated mission is to “to harness the power of young people across the country to fight for sensible gun violence prevention policies that save lives.”

Dorr credited Wyoming Gun Owners’ members for Senate File 80’s demise — “Your emails, as always, are thundering through the capital,” he told supporters in a Facebook video — but the measure had faced long odds from the moment it was introduced; Sen. Coe said the bill “had little chance [of] passing.”

Bob Beck, Wyoming Public Radio’s news director and a longtime observer of the Legislature, had made a tongue-in-cheek prediction ahead of the session that the bill “may fall just shy of the two thirds needed for introduction.”

With only two votes in favor — from Rothfuss and Sen. Mike Gireau, D-Jackson — the legislation suffered one of the biggest defeats of the session.

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