Gun safe storage mandate approved by RI House. Here's what to know.

PROVIDENCE ? Teenagers horsing around. An uncle's unlocked gun. A young life is taken in Johnston.

The shooting death of 16-year-old Dillon Viens in February 2022 was not the only potentially preventable tragedy that led the Rhode Island House on Tuesday to vote 45-to-23 for legislation requiring firearms be placed in locked storage while not in use.

But it took years for safe-storage legislation to get this far, with the legislation now headed to the Senate for final votes.

Gun-rights lobbyists objected to any new firearm requirements during a series of State House hearings over the last four years. A few fretted over the potential delay in getting their hands on their guns in the event their homes are broken into. Others dared authorities to come after them.

They were successful, until this year, in blocking the safe-storage requirement recommended by a 2018 gun safety task force and then introduced, year after year, since at least 2021.

And their arguments were echoed by House Minority Leader Michael Chippendale ? and other House Republicans, including U.S. Senate candidate Patricia Morgan ? during the House debate.

Calling the bill "outrageous," Chippendale said it "renders private firearm ownership for self-defense and defense of your loved ones in your home absolutely worthless."

"I'm here to tell you those seconds will make a big difference when I'm trying to defend my family and I cannot get to my safe or find the key to my safe or forget the password because I'm under pressure because there's a maniac trying to kill my children," Chippendale said.

While the tiny, outnumbered GOP bloc led the opposition, Democratic Rep. Camille Vella-Wilkinson recounted an attempted break-in while she lived out-of-state that, she said, she halted by "putting a shell into my Mossberg and pumping it at the door so the would be intruders could hear it and telling them that if they came through they were going to leave with two butt holes.

"That kept me safe," she said.

But Dillon Viens' grieving mother, Rhonda Brewster, was one of the voices that finally prevailed as the bill moved from State House hearings rooms to House floor:

"Having those weapons available ... and accessible to a teenager who was careless in ... parading the guns around and showing them off to his friends because he thought that was the right thing to do ... ended in taking a life," she told state lawmakers during an earlier hearing on the proposed new safe-storage law.

Standing on the House floor on Tuesday, ahead of the debate, South Kingstown Councilwoman Patti Alley said passage of the safe-storage mandate would bring something good out of her sister Allyson Dosreis' suicide by gun, in 2020, with her partner's unlocked gun.

"Even though it'll never bring my sister back [it] gives me the hope that all of this wasn't in vain and that this will prevent another family, another community ... from going through what we went through. Maybe," she said. "Suicide is an impulsive act."

What does the latest version of the bill do?

Under current Rhode Island law, a gun owner is criminally liable only if a child – someone under 16 years old – gets access to and discharges a gun, causing injury to themselves or others.

Upon conviction, that individual could be fined up to $1,000 and/or imprisoned for up to a year.

• The proposed new law requires the "safe storage" of a firearm in a locked container unless it is equipped with a "tamper-resistant mechanical lock" or device that makes the firearm "inoperable by any person other than the owner."

Addressing concerns raised by gun owners, the storage requirement would not apply to a firearm that is "being carried ... or can be readily carried by a lawfully authorized user."

Fines for violations would range from:

• $250 for a first offense.

• Up to $500 and imprisonment for up to six months for repeat offenses.

• The potential penalty doubles for anyone "who knows or reasonably should know'' that someone under age 18 or a person prohibited by law from buying or possessing a gun was likely to gain access.

• It goes up to $5,000 and/or five years in prison if that gun was used to commit a crime or cause injury.

Both the House and Senate bills would create exceptions for certain hypothetical cases where, for example, someone barred from having a gun somehow "obtains or obtains and discharges the firearm in a lawful act of self-defense or defense of another person."

The arguments:

The Senate passed a slightly different version earlier this year on a mostly party-line vote, with the lead sponsor ? Sen. Pam Lauria ? calling safe storage “a safety precaution that responsible gun owners already take that lowers the risk of injury for children and teens, and helps prevent suicides and gun thefts.” (Only two Democrats - one a gun-dealer - joined the five Republicans on the losing side of the 29-to-7 Senate vote.)

The written testimony was salty, deeply partisan, hyperbolic and, at times, anatomical.

Much of the written testimony said the same thing, word-for-word: "Mandatory storage laws do nothing except tip the scales towards criminals in self-defense scenarios where seconds matter. This bill is going to do nothing except create more innocent victims."

But Claudia Townend of Charlestown urged the lawmakers to "have courage" and not "let the bullies with the 'little penis syndrome' push you around."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: RI gun safe storage requirement gets House approval