Town Meeting may not decide whether to allow firearms in public buildings and parks after all.
The Select Board next week is expected to reconsider its Feb. 25 3-2 vote recommending that Town Meeting in April approve an article proposed by Police Chief Dana Flynn – and backed by Town Manager Derek Brindisi – that would exempt Plymouth from the part of state law that bans guns in such places as town halls. Instead, the board may ask the Police Department to conduct a threat assessment of public buildings and grounds covered by the law.
The pullback comes after board member John Mahoney, who cast the deciding vote last month, said he has changed his mind after hearing from constituents.
“There’s been a very passionate debate over the course of the last week or two over this topic,” Mahoney said during Tuesday’s meeting. “A multitude of people have reached out to me, emails flying everywhere, and I think at this stage it would make complete sense to take a step back from this.”
David Golden, who along with Vice Chair Kevin Canty, voted against recommending the exclusion on Feb. 25, suggested the threat assessment.
Mahoney asked for the matter to be put on next week’s agenda so that the board could take a new vote.
The article proposing the exclusion, Article 12 at the spring Special Town Meeting on April 5, cannot be removed from the warrant, but the Select Board can vote to recommend that Town Meeting members take no action on it, which is what Mahoney wants.
The restrictions on firearms are part of sweeping legislation called “An Act Modernizing Firearms Laws” that was signed into law by Governor Maura Healey last July. But it includes a clause that allows communities to opt out of the ban on guns in municipal buildings and other public places.
Firearms are already banned from schools and federal buildings and some parts of national parks.
According to Flynn, only one town – Rochester – has decided to exempt itself from the new state restrictions in the six months since the law took effect in October. He said some others are considering it, but did not give a number.
At the Feb. 25 meeting, Golden asked Flynn whether there were “other recommendations you could make to us to better secure our facilities,” aside from permitting employees and other people to carry firearms in them.
“Not at this time,” Fynn said.
Under the law, only active and retired law enforcement officers may carry firearms into municipal properties.
Flynn said the law prohibits some 8,000 licensed firearms owners in Plymouth from bringing their weapons onto municipal properties, which he considers a Second Amendment issue. He told the board that the ban would make those places “soft targets” for anyone with bad intentions.
But Canty and Golden resisted that argument, expressing concern that licensed gun owners responding to a gunman on public property could make a situation more dangerous.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org.