Vermont has distributed 4,000 gun locks since launching a gun safety initiative last year, U.S. Attorney Nikolas Kerest announced Tuesday.
The devices — which, when installed, prevent a gun from being loaded or fired — are being given out for free through public libraries, sheriff’s offices, emergency rooms and more, as part of a renewed focus on safe gun storage to prevent suicides and other forms of firearm-related violence.
Kerest also said the state’s all-in-one gun safety resource, GunSafeVT.org, has been updated with information about recent laws.
As of last year, Vermont allows family and household members to petition for extreme risk protection orders (ERPOS), which allow police to temporarily confiscate firearms if a person has threatened to harm themselves or others. Previously only a state’s attorney or the attorney general could apply for these orders.
Another provision of the law makes it a crime to negligently store firearms if they are used by a child or other prohibited person in committing a crime or displaying it in a threatening manner.
The state’s focus on personal safety arises from the fact that, though homicides increased last year, the vast majority Vermont’s gun deaths are suicides.
“This project is about secure gun storage, so it’s not a panacea for gun violence throughout the state,” Kerest said. “This initiative is to try to get more people to know about the resources that exist out there and to create barriers between guns and violent events.”
Rebecca Bell, a pediatric ICU doctor at the University of Vermont Children’s Hospital and president of the Vermont Medical Society, said the deadliness of firearms necessitates prevention, noting that the state has more firearm deaths than (nonfatal) firearm injuries.
“When patients come in that are critically injured, oftentimes we cannot help those who have a firearm injury,” Bell said. “In particular, those with self-inflicted firearm injuries often do not make it to the hospital so we cannot help them.”
Bell advised locking up firearms unloaded and storing ammunition separately or temporarily removing the firearms, made easier by the state’s Firearms Storage Program.
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