A day after a House lawmaker proposed an amendment calling for sweeping restrictions on firearms, gun-rights supporters sat just feet away from him and voiced their strong opposition to his proposal as well as others.

“You blame the tool, when the problem is the person wielding that tool,” Chris Bradley, president of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, said. “For the acts of the deranged few, the vast majority suffer ‘restrictions.’”

In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Bradley and other representatives of Vermont gun-rights groups used terms such as unconstitutional, unenforceable and, in some cases, nonsensical, when discussing the bill as well as the proposed amendment. The committee also heard calls for a public hearing on the gun legislation under consideration to allow more voices to be heard.

“I want to be known as somebody who stood up for this and didn’t let this roll over me,” Bill Moore, of the Vermont Traditions Coalition, told committee members. “We are going to fight, I’m telling you. We’re going to fight in a civil manner.”

The panel has been hearing testimony this week about S.55, a bill passed earlier this month in the Senate that includes provisions that expand background checks to include the private sale of firearms and raises the age to purchase a gun to 21 in Vermont.

Rep. Martin LaLonde, D-South Burlington and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, proposed an amendment on Wednesday to that bill that includes several more provisions.

The additional provisions include bans on assault-style firearms and high-capacity magazines, defined in the amendment as a device capable of holding more than 10 bullets.

LaLonde’s proposed amendment also calls for a 10-day waiting period, after a background check, for the transfer of a firearm, and a requirement that firearms be kept safely stored.

The proposal exempts firearms and such magazines legally owned before the legislation would go into effect on July 1, 2018.

The panel took no action on Thursday on S.55 or the proposed amendment. The gun-rights advocates who spoke urged the committee to slow down what they termed as a rush to pass gun legislation.

The committee agenda stated a possible vote could have taken place on Thursday, or even on Friday. By late Thursday morning, Rep. Chip Conquest, D-Wells River, vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said such a vote wouldn’t take place until next week at the earliest.

Gun legislation leaped to center stage this legislative session, following the arrest of 18-year-old Jack Sawyer of Poultney last month.

Police say they foiled a plot by Sawyer to shoot up and cause “mass casualties” at Fair Haven High Union School, where Sawyer had been a student.

The activity on gun legislation in the Statehouse coincides with calls across the country for stricter gun laws following February’s mass shooting at a Florida high school.

Testifying to the House Judiciary Committee against LaLonde’s amendment on Thursday, Bradley, of the Vermont Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, ticked off a series of questions he had about proposals.

At one point, Bradley asked, “A person decides to move to Vermont because of its current ‘liberal gun laws’. He owns a large number of high-capacity magazines, which he ‘lawfully possessed’ prior to July 1, 2018, in the state he previously lived in. He is not in jeopardy of violating this law, correct?”

The gun-rights advocates also testified against the 10-day waiting period and the firearms storage provision of LaLonde’s amendment, saying it would make it difficult for people to defend themselves, especially in emergency situations.

The committee is expected to take additional testimony on the bill today.