On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to do a “walk-through” of changes made to a gun bill which passed largely along party lines last week in the House. S.30 has now been approved by both the House and the Senate, but because the House significantly amended the bill, the Senate must approve it again.
S.30, by Sen. Phil Baruth, started out as a “location restriction,” banning firearms in hospitals. However, the bill has been significantly altered and made much worse by including new provisions. One of the adopted changes would extend NICS-delayed transfers from 3 days to 30 days. Under current federal law, a check that comes back as delayed is allowed (but not required) to be completed after three business days have passed. Fortunately, most of the delays are, in fact, cleared within three days. This situation can be more prevalent for people who have common names. However, under S.30, these individuals would be caught in an infinite loop. NICS checks are only good for 30 days, and if an FFL is forced to sit on the transfer for a month, a new check has to be initiated and the process repeats itself.
Vermont is one of the safest states in the country. It is extremely disconcerting that House and Senate leadership have made this a priority early in the session while the Statehouse remains closed to the public and this legislative work is being done online. Please contact members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and respectfully request that they reject S.30.
NRA-ILA opposes this infringement on the Second Amendment, and we will work diligently to defeat this harmful legislation. Please continue to follow these NRA-ILA alerts for the latest updates.