The associate medical director of New Hampshire Hospital urged lawmakers to pass gun control legislation Friday, describing the anguish that followed the fatal shooting of a security officer in the facility’s lobby last year.

“A coworker was murdered 100 feet from my office,” Dr. Samanta Swetter told the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. “Then I had to sit there while other people I loved were in danger, and I could do very little to help them.”

The committee was holding public hearings on half a dozen bills seeking to either restrict or expand access to firearms, including one drafted in response to the death of Bradley Haas, who was killed in November by a former patient at the psychiatric hospital in Concord.

“You’re asking what kind of person would do it? It would be me,” she said. “I don’t want to have a moment of weakness where I can’t see that life’s not worth living, because it is.