Updated at 5:44 p.m.

Vermont gun shops can continue selling firearms during the coronavirus outbreak, according to Secretary of Commerce Lindsay Kurrle, though they must do everything they can to limit face-to-face contact.

"They're allowed to make those sales, and wherever possible we want them to do it online and [through] curbside pickup," Kurrle told Seven Days Friday morning. "But because we recognize that you can't legally buy a firearm without an in-person connection during that process, obviously that can happen."

On Friday afternoon, the state’s Agency of Commerce and Community Development issued new guidance clarifying regulations for gun shops. The rules allow for “in-person transactions to comply with background checks” but call for dealers to limit contact with buyers.

The agency recommends that gun shops make appointments with customers, use curbside pickup, conduct financial transactions over the phone, suspend browsing, limit the handling of firearms and “suspend the sale of non-essential items,” such as clothing, shoes and outdoor supplies.

The legal status of gun shops had been unclear since Gov. Phil Scott issued a "stay home, stay safe" order on March 24. The order suspended all "in-person business operations," except those deemed essential to protecting public health, safety and national security. Certain retail businesses, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, were specifically exempted from this mandate. Others, such as hardware stores, were allowed to stay open as long as they used curbside pickup "to the extent possible."

Henry Parro arrived at his central Vermont gun shop an hour and a half before it opened on Monday to do some paperwork. Ten minutes later, a car parked outside and waited.

“Once they saw that I wasn’t going to open the door, they apparently went and got a coffee,” said Parro, 61, who has owned Parro’s Gun Shop & Police Supplies in Waterbury since 1983.

When the shop finally opened at 9 a.m., the same car was back in the lot. Another was waiting close by.

Speaking to Seven Days by phone not long after, Parro counted more than a half dozen people perusing his collection within 15 minutes of opening the doors — a stream of customers that has held steady over the last week since “all hell broke loose.”

Two committees of the Vermont Senate summoned a pair of Harvard Business School professors to the Statehouse on Thursday in an attempt to breathe life into vetoed gun legislation.

The bill in question, S.169, would mandate a 24-hour waiting period before most handgun purchases. It cleared the legislature last May but was vetoed in June by Republican Gov. Phil Scott.

Since then, legislative leaders have struggled to decide whether to compromise with the governor or attempt to override his veto, which would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers. While the measure met that threshold last year in the Senate, it fell short in the House on a vote of 82 to 58.

On Thursday, senators sought to convince their colleagues — and perhaps the governor — that the bill could, in fact, save lives. They invited professors Deepak Malhotra and Michael Luca to present their research showing that waiting periods cut the homicide rate by 17 percent and the suicide rate by 7 to 11 percent.

"If this policy passes, if the objective is to reduce gun deaths, that would be something you could very much expect," Malhotra told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Health and Welfare Committee.

Anako Lumumba tried to protect herself from an abusive ex, her brother told Vermont lawmakers on Wednesday. "But the system wasn't enough to take the guns away from the guy," Adolphe Lumumba said.

In May 2018, police have alleged, Leroy Headley shot Anako to death in the South Burlington home they once shared. She had repeatedly reported his threatening behavior to police — twice in the week before she was killed — but Headley still had legal access to firearms.

Reps. Maxine Grad (D-Moretown) and Martin LaLonde (D-South Burlington) are seeking to prevent such tragedies. The chair and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee have introduced legislation that would require subjects of a restraining order to surrender their firearms. Their bill, H.610, would also expand the state's new "red flag law" to allow family and household members — not just law enforcement officials — to seek extreme risk protection orders, which allow for the temporary confiscation of firearms from those deemed dangerous.

Adolphe Lumumba told their committee that the bill might have helped Anako.

"I'm not here today to save my sister, but I know there's other people out there who can be saved by this," he said. "This is something my sister would have wanted, too."

The measure is one of several firearms-related bills lawmakers are considering this session.