 Yeah, great. Well, welcome everybody. Before we start H610, I'd just like to go around the room and say hello to everybody and have folks introduce themselves. I'm Michael Reinhardt. I'm with the Dancing Run for Consulting. David Chair with the Attorney General's Office. Persephone Miller with Representative MQ. Taffin Reinhardt also with Representative MQ. Oleg Unam also with Representative MQ. Wayne Fisher-Orca, media. Brian Pearson, Chief Superior Governor. Carolyn Hanson, Attorney General's Office. Jessica Barquess from our network against domestic and sexual violence. Sarah Robinson also with our Vermont network. Natalie Silver with the New Classic Group. Ed Kotler, President and Co-Owner of Vermont. Eric Davis, Vice President and Co-Owner of Vermont. Chris Bradley, President from our Federation of Sportsman's Clubs. Tim Behan, Federation. Laura Suven, Governor of Iowa. Gabrielle Molina, a guy to give her a scourge to fight the violence. James Pepper, Department of State's Attorney and Chair of State. Eric and Patrick, do you have a lot of attorneys? Allie Hauss also with Representative MQ. Stephanie Hauss also with Representative MQ. Okay, great. Thank you, thank you everybody. I have a chair as well represented here today. Yes, she is, great. Okay, welcome. Eric, thank you. And I assume folks either have copies of the bill or have access to it online. Right, everybody have what they need from the bill. Okay, great. As far as assistant coach or who... Yeah, thanks. Good morning everybody. Good morning. Nice to see you. Your first visit of the year. I know, my first walk through of the year. I'm trying to settle into my familiar spot. I know, your chairs. Yes, I know, it's good. But nice to see everybody, happy new year. I am here, this is Eric Fitzpatrick with the Office of Legislative Counsel. Here to talk about H610, which is an act related to firearms and domestic violence. Two topics which the committee is very familiar with having spent a lot of time over the last few years dealing with both firearms and domestic violence. To see as we walk through the bill that there are a number of different discreet topics related to firearms and or domestic violence within the bill. I'm sure the committee remembers them well, but at the same time I thought that as we go through each subject it might be helpful to have a minute or two of background to sort of lay the foundation, refresh everybody's recollection. As we go through that feel free to jump in and ask questions. Maybe there's something I did cover as thoroughly as I could. But hopefully the idea of that is to get everyone sort of with a little space layer of knowledge so then we can pose changes within that section of the bill. Great. That sort of makes sense as a way to... Perfect. Good. Thank you so much, Chair. Yeah, sure. And I see there's a lot of witnesses on the agenda this morning too. So I'll try to jump right in, but feel free to speed me up. Yeah, now take your time, and this is not the only day we're doing this. So if we don't get the folks, certainly we'll make sure we get to them next time. Okay. That sounds good. So with that in mind then, let's start right in with section one of the bill. This piece of 8610 goes with background checks. So firearm sales background checks. Now this is a topic that has come up in the committee quite a bit over the last couple of years, as I mentioned, to give a little background of what sort of exists in the law at the moment. It's helpful to know that there's two different laws relating to the background checks for firearm sales. There's a federal law and there's a state law. Now the federal law applies to sales of firearms from federal licensees. They're known as FFLs, Federal Firearms Licensees. Essentially that means a dealer in firearms. So generally that's a person who's involved in the business of selling firearms, a store that sells firearms, a business, that sort of thing. The federal firearms background check applies to sales by licensees, by stores. Now you may recall that in 2018 the legislature passed a state law relating to background checks and that would apply to sales between private persons. So it doesn't have to be a licensee who's making the sale. It would be a private person who's making the sale and in that situation a background check would be required also. So that's the big picture. The state firearms law is, sorry, the state firearms background check law is what you see in front of you in section one of the bill. That is 13VSA 4019. And the language of the federal law is very actually necessary to sort of understand a little bit before we look at the change being made in section one. So I'm going to try and pull that up right now. Is there something I should hit myself and get visible back here? Oh, okay, thanks. So as I mentioned, the federal law on background checks applies to sales made by folks that are in the business of selling firearms, federal firearms licensees. Oh, here we go. And section one deals with a particular piece of that federal statute, which we are about to look at. Subsection T here. I want to scroll down. See, this is a lengthy statute. So here we are. This is the federal 928, 18USC 922T, which is the federal firearms transfer background check provision. And the language that we really want to focus on starts in subdivision one, but skip the first few lines there since the act is in effect already. But you'll see that a license is sort of in the highlighted blue language is where it starts. The second piece of that, license importer, manufacturer, or licensed dealer, that's who we're talking about because these sales are mostly made by licensed dealers, shall not transfer a firearm to any person who's not licensed under this chapter unless, and this is what you've heard, we've talked about before, the NIC system, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. So before this transfer can be made by a licensed firearms dealer, you see under subdivision A, they have to contact NICs. And the dealers have a system in which they can contact NICs instantaneously. You'll know that the title of this, or the name of the entity is the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. That's what it's meant to be, quickly, they can make a quick contact. So that's what they do, they have to contact the system and then under subdivision B, you see, then what happens after they contact them? Well, the system provides the licensee, that's the dealer who's making the communication, with a unique identification number. So what happens in order for them to get that number back is that they get a word from the NIC system that the person is clear. In other words, they're not in the list of prohibited categories. You sort of remember that topic that we've dealt with in this committee quite a bit as well. You could be convicted of a certain violent crime. You could have been subject to a hospitalization order for mental health reasons by a court. You could be a fugitive from justice. You could be subject to or leave from abuse order. There's a long list of categories of people who are prohibited from possessing firearms by federal law, by state law now as well. But that information is maintained by the NIC system so that when the dealer contacts them, the idea is they come up with either a hit or a miss on this person who's proposing to buy the firearm. Either that person is listed in one of these categories or they're not. And if they're not, then that's when they provide the dealer with this unique identification number. And that number is associated with the transfer and they save that number. You see down in subdivision C there, sorry, two, the firearm is not violated. That just means that the person doesn't come up on one of these prohibited categories. Then they assign this unique number to the transfer and that's what gets saved. All other records are destroyed. The transfer is just sort of recorded by number only. And that's how they can, in the future, always know if they're, you know, you've sort of heard how you can backtrack and find out where a gun was sold, how it made its way from one person to another. They do it through the association with this unique identification number. So that's subdivision one there, B1. You see, that's what happens in one possible fact matter. But look at subdivision two. Different possibility. What if there is no unique identification number yet? But three business days pass. Three business days go by since the licensee contacted the system. So in other words, they contacted NICS as for a background check on this person who's proposing to make a purchase. And the system has not notified the licensee that the receipt of a firearm by that person would violate GRN. In other words, they have not told them within those three days that the person's name has come up on one of the prohibited categories. They haven't been flagged. But they haven't answered either. For whatever reason, it's taken longer than it ordinarily takes. And I don't have the facts, my witnesses may be able to tell you what the statistics are on this, but the vast majority of cases purchases, I should say. They get an answer instantly. But it's a small minority of cases in which they don't. And if three days pass, you see the way the statute is written, that three days pass, they don't get an answer. Then the transfer can proceed. Everybody understand that? So it's not that it's required to proceed, but the seller can proceed with the transfer. If they haven't got an answer from the NIC system within three days, that sort of from a legal perspective is known as the default proceed. Sort of anecdotally, you may have heard it referred to as the Charleston loophole, but I referred to it from the legal description, which is default proceed. There was a default in that there was no answer given, but they proceed with the transaction if three days have passed and they haven't got an answer. So that's the background. Any idea how often that happens? I've never read anything or even thought to look it up as far as how many guns can be sold after that three-day loophole. I'm going to guess it probably, percentage-wise there's probably not that many, but I'm sure it happens. I don't have the exact numbers and know some of your witnesses might, but yeah, I think you're right from what I've read anecdotally. Yes, the majority of sales happen within the prior to that three-day window when they get an instant response. But I don't have a percentage-specific way. Question about that. So what would cause that? In other words, sort of if you're... What does the situation look like where the three days would expire and a person would be able to do the default release? Default proceed. Proceed. Yeah. That they would be able to move forward with that when typically you would expect that they would... I don't know if that makes sense. You mean like why might that happen so essentially? Yeah, why might that happen and then, you know, is the firearms dealer alerted on the fourth day and that's how you find out that it wouldn't have normally proceeded? I think in terms of why that happens, a couple of situations that I've read about and which might happen is just that, for example, a criminal conviction pops up on the record check with the NIC system, but it's not clear right away whether that particular type of conviction would prohibit the person, whether it fits into one of the categories. And so further research might be needed to try and figure out, well, this person was convicted of this offense under state law at one point in time, but is that really, for example, a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence? That happens to be one of the list of the categories. Does that fit under that definition? More time may be required for the NICS staff to research that and figure it out and that may be... That's just one possibility that I happened to recently read about that sometimes when the categorization isn't clear, that's why the three-day period would continue or why it will take longer than three days to get an answer. And does the firearms dealer get the result even if it's after that? I don't know. That's a good question. You mean like if time passes and they haven't got a result yet? Let's say they decide that, you know, would the system be providing that information say five days after? Right. Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure the answer to that. So, Eric, do you know if... I'm just thinking of all the big IDs that younger people use or can buy online to get into bars, et cetera. Right. Is part of the checking... checking the ID to see if it's a real person? Like how... Because it sounds like they're just looking at a list, but if I bought a driver's license and I'm not who I say I am, how would they know that? They do do an ID check. Yep, that's... I'm just trying to find that. It's in addition to... but within the... very far. See, in subdivision C there. See, that's another thing that has to happen within that sale. Transfer has to verify the identity by examining identification documents. So, you know, yes, you're right. I mean there were some very sophisticated ones that I have seen people purchase that you wouldn't believe that they're fake. Not real. But maybe... I think it sort of depends upon the ability of the licensee to make that decision, though. You're right. There may be times when false license is so good that it may pass. So it's not like a birth certificate. It's not like when you go to get a passport where you have to give three, you know, he's a male birth certificate. It's just a simple idea. Well, I'll follow up on you with that because I see that the valid identification document term is defined. I didn't follow up on that preliminarily. But that's worth looking to see what they accept. Yeah, absolutely. So, everyone sort of have a handle on how that system works. So, the next thing I'm going to look at then is, well, what does the proposal of an 8-6-10 do due to this default proceed provision in federal law? So, let's look at that language. It's on page four. Thank you. Now, again, sorry. Just to be clear, everything we've done over so far, like on page, not necessarily page one, but on two and three with everything that's listed. That's all that's listed. Yes. That's what you passed in 2018. Exactly. That's the state background check provision. And again, just a quick refreshment of your recollection. You remember what that did was the state background check provision applied to sales between private people, right? The federal one only applies to federal licensees. The state one applies to private sales with some exceptions like immediate family, law enforcement, those kinds of things are accepted. You don't have to do background checks in those situations. But it does sort of piggyback under the federal system in the sense that the way it worked procedureally was the proposed person who's selling and the proposed person who's buying have to go to the licensee together and the licensee has to facilitate the transfer. In other words, they do the background check on the person who's going to buy the firearm just the same way they would do it as if they were selling it themselves. And if they come up with a hit and the person is flagged, it's by NICS, to be in one of the prohibited categories, then they have to hit give the firearm back and decline to facilitate the transfer. But you sort of remember that whole process. So that's the way it's set up in state law. But as I said, it's sort of piggybacks on the federal system. So the same default proceed provision that would apply in the federal context applies to the state law. So subdivision D addresses that default proceed situation. What it says is that the firearm cannot be transferred if, and you see subdivision one, a background check is required under this section or federal law. So that means it's a transfer by a licensee, which would be a federal background check situation, or it's a transfer by a private person. But again, it only says if the background check is required. So again, those ones between family members, law enforcement, anything that's accepted, that's exempt that I should say, under the state law, this doesn't apply to that either. But if it does, if there's a background check required, then the transfer can't happen until you look at the language in line seven through nine now. And it cannot happen if the licenseeer has not been provided with a unique identification number by NICS. So that brings us back to that first section. Everybody see how that works then? What that means is that the default proceed option would no longer exist. They have to go take a quick look at the language again. You see, under the federal law, the transfer can happen either if you get a unique identification number. That means that the person essentially came up clear, but not prohibitive, or three business days passed. Well, now what you're saying in state law is no transfer can happen unless you get the unique identification number. It has to go to the root where NICS affirmatively determines that the person is not in one of the prohibited categories than the transfer can be for. So the default proceed option is eliminated for purposes of your state statutes. And there's a background check that doesn't therefore be complete. Is another way to look at it? Yeah, at least they would have determined that a person is not in any one of the categories of prohibit symptoms as a fire. And also, it's my great pleasure to note my first typo of the session since my first time in the C-line 13. So what you've done is, okay, so that's the prohibition. You wrote this into the existing criminal penalty as well, which is a one-year misdemeanor on lines 13 through 15. However, when it says Subsection C, it should say Subsection D because you see that the new provision there is lines 4 through 9. What you're doing is making that new statute subject to the same criminal sanction that you have in existing law for a background check violation, which is one year and $500 fine. First typo, but I'm sure not the last. Probably not even in this bill, actually. That's number one. So that is all I have to say about the background check piece. You may have just said it, as I was reading, I might not have heard it, but on line 13, Section 2, the person who violates the possible year imprisonment, $500, that's misdemeanor, right? Yes. I know there's different classification for misdemeanors. What would be the classification, I guess, on this, or just misdemeanor? Right now, we don't have a classification system for misdemeanors. You may be thinking about the legislation and proposed that we talk about doing that. The study committee and I think this committee will be talking about adopting that sort of system. Right now, it's just either misdemeanor or felony. Moving on to relief from these orders. Very quick question. Do we have... I know it says here on page 5 that one of the exemptions is transfer from one immediate family member to another immediate family member. Did we have the definition of what an immediate family member is somewhere in here, or is it just not... Yes, I believe that is in there, yes. So I can follow up with you on that, or the next time we meet out about it, but yes, that is in the statute, for sure. Thanks. Yeah. So moving on to the relief from abuse order sections, which are section 2 and 3 to start with. I'm going to go back and look again. Helpful for a moment to look at what the current relief from abuse order statute says, and that is 15 BSA 1103, which I'm hopeful is going to pop up right here. So, under the existing law, you can see 1103A, any family or household member can seek relief from abuse by going to court and they file a complaint, they file a petition, and they're asking the court to find, essentially, that they've been abused and that there's a danger of abuse in the future. There's some more permutations to that, but the big picture is they've been abused by the defendant and there's a danger of abuse in the future. That's the case if the court finds that, the court can issue what's known as an RFA, relief from abuse order, that's going to prohibit the defendant in a potential limitations that the court can issue, that the defendant can't contact the plaintiff, you see the list right here, and this is not an exclusive list, by the way, it's just a list. Excuse me, Eric, this is civil and, what do you say, the court in? Yeah, exactly. It's not the criminal division, thank you. Right, it's the family division, ordinarily. So, you see there in that list, it starts with A and I'm like, yeah, okay. There's various things that the court can order in the relief from abuse order that vacate the household, or war parental rights and responsibility, parent-child contact, contact between the plaintiff and the defendant. There's a long list of things that the court can order to happen when it finds that there's been abuse and there's a danger of abuse in the future. Now, you see an important point here under subsection B there, and this will be important as we go forward, that generally speaking, the court grants only after notice to the defendant and here. You see that in subsection B? Now, that's important to say generally speaking, because this is a final relief from abuse order. However, there's also an emergency relief from abuse order, and in that case, the court finds that there's an immediate danger, an immediate danger of further abuse, then it can be issued ex parte, which I think everyone can remember that the ex parte means the notice has not been provided to the defendant yet. The person goes into the court on their own and they get an order from the court without yet providing notice to the defense. The defendant might not have been there, and that's what ex parte means by their own individual. Now, if that happens, they have to go back into court the emergency order only lasts for 14 days. So in other words, the idea is that you don't want to have too much time expire without the person having had a chance to respond, so after that period ordinarily, if circumstances warrant it, they'll go back in and try and get this final order, in which case the defendant gets notice and they have an opportunity to come in and respond to it. So the emergency one can be done ex parte on their own. The final one defendant has to be there, but the emergency usually only lasts for 14 days, and that's what's kind of sad. So back and forth here, but all right, so that's kind of your big picture background on what RFAs do now. And as I was just saying, there's a sort of a long list in the statute of different things that might be in the order when the court issues it. The first piece of 8.6.10 does is it adds some things that have to be in that order. It's not a may, it's a shall. It says here's some things that have to be in the order and they're related to firearms. What are they? Can they really deal with relinquishment, where the defendant can reside, to deal with being provided to the defendant. The three big picture things. The first one is the order has to require immediate relinquishment. That's line 13. Until the expiration of the order. So again, it's not permanent, but as long as the order is in effect. Of all firearms that are in the defendant's possession, ownership or control, or that another person possesses owns or controls on behalf of the defendant. So, relinquishment is the key piece to sort of take away from that paragraph. Order has to have it. Number two. Order has to prohibit the defendant from residing at a residence where firearms are present. So, firearms can't be in a residence where the defendant is residing. And number three, has to inform the defendant that he or she is prohibited from possessing firearms until the expiration of the order. So, it has to be language right in the order that says you are prohibited by state and or federal law from prohibiting, sorry, from possessing a firearm while this order is in effect. So, three requirements that are added to what has to be in the order when the court cases it. Say the situation of married couple, big gun collection, relief from abuse, has to move out of the house. The guns are still in the house. Are those confiscated? At that point, I mean, the person who owns the guns and has the RFA isn't even there. I think that's a good question and it might be something for Judge Greerson or one of the other witnesses to talk about whether there is some discretion on the part of the court there. If the order prohibits the person from residing at the house, might there be some discretion for the court to not confiscate the firearms? That's an interesting point. I have a question in total ignorance being new to the Judiciary Committee. Is it typical to have that much of a directive to the court to say that an order shall include this to take away that discretion from what is essentially a court decision? It's not at all uncommon. But it's also, it's a sort of 50-50 situation. There are times when the committee decides court should have discretion, but it's also very common for there are certain areas where the legislature will decide that we really want the court to do a decision. Yes. So another scenario. So the immediate family member has received the firearms and the order is imposed. How does that family member find out that he or she has to relinquish the person's firearms, especially if they're not communicating well personally? Right. Like what kind of does an order get sent to them as well? What's the tracking on that? Or would you say? I would think that the immediate family member is in possession of firearms, and this sort of brings up the same question which is that that itself could qualify as relinquishment so that the person no longer is in possession of it. I forgot to mention though that there's also another exception that the statute proposes here. You'll see that on line 12 there it says this relinquishment is required unless subdivision 4 applies. So subdivision 4, let's look at what that is, that is essentially permits see that's in line 17 through 21, essentially permits the defendant to go before the judge and under oath state that they don't possess any firearms. So they have an option to say well I don't have any, I'm not possessing any, and in that case the order doesn't have to include relinquishment. You might see that as long as they testify under oath. Now it's also an interesting point about that, an important point is this only applies in the final order. We're looking at the final order of language right now. That option of the defendant going in and testifying that they don't have firearms is in the emergency order and that makes sense because remember that's ex parte. They might not be there anyway. But it does exist in the final order, so if later on when they get noticed they come to the hearing and they can come and testify under oath that they don't possess any firearms then the relinquishment order doesn't have to be issued. Alright, so that's the first piece of the RFA stuff. We're going to move on to another topic within the RFA provision and this is another addition that you see in H610 and this is Division B we're going on to page 7. Now that's in addition to what we just talked about what has to be in the order. This provides the court with the authority to issue a warrant simultaneously with the order. So at the same time that it issues the RFA it can simultaneously issue a warrant for the seizure of firearms that are in the defendant's possession in the defendant's possession. Provided that it makes these three probable cause findings. See those right there or lines 4 through 7. It has to find probable cause to believe that one there are firearms in the defendant's possession ownership or control when the order is issued or while it's in effect. Two, the defendant has committed an act of abuse and three, a search and seizure, a search for and seizure of the firearms is necessary to protect the life, health, or well-being of a victim on whose behalf to release this soft. Now, a few seconds of background on that language you may remember that generally speaking a warrant is issued by the court based on probable cause that a crime has been committed or will be committed or is being committed. That's generally speaking true. Probable cause is required for a warrant. This is an unusual situation if you think about it because as you mentioned, Representative Grad this is a civil context, it's a civil order the court is issuing this order that for example the defendant did not have contact with the plaintiff, this RFA, this Relief from Abuse Order but no crime has been committed yet and there isn't necessarily any suspicion that any crime is going to be committed. So, in order to address concerns about constitutionality, search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment, under Article 11 of the Vermont Constitution, that's why this language is in it, to require that the court make a probable cause finding and it's helpful to know this is on your, I'm not going to jump to the link right now, but on your page of links that I sent you, you'll see a decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court and there's only a couple of states that actually have this process in place at the moment, this process where simultaneously with the issuance of the RFA, a warrant is issued as well New Jersey and I think Delaware is the other one New Jersey, as it happened just a few months ago, the Supreme Court New Jersey issued a ruling that constitutionality of that was challenged and the court held that it was okay for the warrant to issue in the civil relief from abuse context as long as the court made a probable cause finding the language of which is tracked right here so again, I think you could expect that to be litigated in Vermont as well it's very surprising if it were not at some point but at least you have the advantage of having based this language on a ruling of one state Supreme Court that found that it was constitutional again, no guarantee that that's what the Vermont Supreme Court would say, but helpful in the sense that it's the intent is to track the language of the decision that already upheld that process in other states so I have a clarifying question somebody can't go in and get this order if everything is like perfectly fine and dandy in the relationship right, they're asking for relief from abuse so they're sort of the there's enough evidence I guess that the judge is saying there's abuse going on I'm going to order a relief from abuse order so sort of a crime, like we're assuming something illegal right, happened in order well the definition of abuse isn't always necessarily a crime but it's not like hey, Fred didn't make dinner tonight in prompt, you know what I mean like it's not something casual exactly right, so there's I'm just questioning when you say no crime has been committed, it just seems more casual then I think no crime in the but in the criminal it's a civil but there still is an action or wrong that that has to rise to a level that the judge is going to take seriously right, and I think that's exactly why it was one of the sort of bases that the court in New Jersey said when they said that when they upheld the issues of the warrant those situations as you say it's not just some pedestrian situation it's a situation in which there's danger potential danger to the to the plane that's involved and so while it may not technically be a crime it's still certainly a wrong flag otherwise the order wouldn't addition right C&D action I'm going to pass over a little bit that's just boilerplate language that we've seen in here quite a bit it's really just this procedure of what happens to the firearm that actually is seized and that's we've had the statute been on the books for several years and you've probably heard the ongoing discussion about how much room do we have for these firearms that's sort of an issue for another day this fall is the same process they already have in law where they're who handles them it gives law enforcement immunity in lines 11 to 16 in other words they can't be sued it's a language that happens unless they've been grossly language it reckless reckless but that's as I say boilerplate that's in a number of other places and firearms related statutes as well subdivision four we already talked about this was the exception to remember that they don't have to issue they don't have to order relinquishment and the order the person testifies under that they don't possess any firearms and lastly with respect to the RFAP you'll see that the there's some specific requirements for the forms the complaint and the affidavit have to include specific provisions gathering information about the defendant's firearms specifically and questions that require the plaintiff that's the person who files for the order they have to state with particularity the type and location of any firearm in the defense possession so anything that they know about about the defendant's firearms has to be presented in the complaint and in the affidavit that's I think more of an information gathering piece but to allow the court to know whether or not it needs to issue an order for relinquishment at least this way it requires the plaintiff to state well yes I know that the person has some so this language as far as what information is collected the way I look at it pretty big would that be the type of information that's collected would that be defined under rules of some kind because what I'm thinking of I mean you know the type of gun it is how old it is, serial numbers and all that and myself I mean if this passes and it's implemented now one thing I don't like lists so much now we have a list with a lot of information on somebody who potentially didn't do anything you know maybe the relief from abuse isn't granted or it's taken away because it's deemed that it just doesn't meet the qualifications and now the state has a list of this guy's I don't like to say guy but this person's possessions and whatever and I don't see anything there that once this list is made that is it destroyed afterwards yeah you're right the language does not cover that so look it certainly could so if you felt like that there needed to be some parameters around you know how long that information can be retained what has to be done with it how it can be used that's absolutely something that could be could be specified so the next section is emergency relief from abuse orders no need to go through this because it's exactly the same as what we just all it does is set up the exact same process that we just talked about through your standard RFA the same requirements that have to be in the order that we talked about relinquishment, residence and provide the defendant with notice etc that warrant language exactly the same the storage language is the same as I mentioned it doesn't include the stuff about a sort of exception that allows the defendant to testify under oath because the defendant might not necessarily be at this hearing so the last piece related to RFAs then is section 4 which is a prohibition on people who are subject to RFA orders from possessing firefighters now remember this takes us back I mentioned this at the beginning remember there already is in statute lists of categories of people who are prohibited from possessing fire people have been convicted of certain crimes in 2015 I believe it was when we passed the Vermont statute on prohibiting certain groups of folks from possessing firearms the way it's phrased now is generally speaking it's a listed crime, remember those are serious serious felonies for the most part some misdemeanors so most are felonies and that generally is how you have defined which people convicted of Vermont crimes came to this firearms but there's been a federal law in the books on this for quite a long time and it will help for a moment to take a quick look at that because that is related to what you're looking at in front of you right now because as you see we just noted the language says that people who are subject to relief from abuse orders cannot possess firearms right that's what the language says and the language specifically says both emergency orders you see that line 18 to subject to an emergency order or a final order you can't possess firearms so that's what the proposed language says if you look under federal law which I believe back to G federal law also lists I think there's eight or nine prohibited categories of folks who can't possess firearms as I said it's been on the books for quite some time here's our list right here now if you look at number eight this is existing federal law these are folks who are prohibited from firearms possession person who is subject to a court order that A was issued after hearing of which the person received actual notice and had an opportunity to participate and B restrained the person from harassing stalking or threatening an intimate partner of such person or a child of such person etc etc so it sounds like an RFA right which is what it is it does cover Vermont RFA so people who are subject to Vermont RFA in certain circumstances are already prohibited under federal law from possessing firearms everybody see that anybody quick quiz what what's the distinction this way no the other way just wanted to give you guys are pretty tall by the way you're good now so it's only the emergency piece exactly well that's exactly it so the you see that the federal law because it specifically says that only if they're subject to the court order this is under A was issued after hearing of what the person received notice remember emergency orders exparte as we said so no notice person isn't necessarily going to be there so that person would not be prohibited by federal law from possessing firearm however if H610 goes for it then that person is possessed prohibited from possession by this one I should note that it's not unusual in fact I think all 50 states now have their own prohibitions on people who can possess firearms and it's not unusual for other state laws to cover emergency orders there were exparte as a person so Eric this says to own so this language says to possess or own but it doesn't say to purchase and I'm wondering even if it meant to purchase how quickly do these orders get put on the federal list like daily or that was an interesting question for I think both Jeff Greerson and Lisa as far as the crowd I think they the court has a protocol for shipping that information to next so in terms of purchasing I purchased a gun that isn't coming for 16 days so theoretically it will be after my first relief from abuse order which it doesn't count anyway so what if I'm purchasing a gun with a delayed delivery time does it stop somebody from purchasing if they're not taking possession right away I'm not sure the answer to that is an interesting question the possession you certainly cannot possess it so if you were to purchase it right away you'd be in violation for sure some delayed delivery system it's an interesting one I have to give that a little bit more thought everybody okay though with this section against another two year misdemeanors the proposal there so section 5 is just data collection I won't spend too much time on this data collection provision so the law enforcement agencies that have served relief from abuse orders either temporary or final have to collect that data on that and report to the Department of Public Safety number of orders issued number served and the number of firearms collected pursuant to these orders you see also that once DPS gets the data they have to report it to you folks the House and Senate committees on judiciary there's also data collection provision on the number of show cause hearings that are held in the previous year that the court is supposed to report back to the judiciary committees as well now I'm going to move on to the next topic which is ERPO which is the Extreme Risk Protection Order provision another thing that was passed in 2018 another major piece of legislation went through this committee take a moment to pull up the ERPO language you can see something right there remember again the big picture of an ERPO allows a law enforcement actually a state's attorney or the attorney general can go into court and get an order from the court actually in fact the language was based on the relief from abuse order language but it's the same idea in the sense that it allows in this case a state's attorney or the AG to go into court and get an order from the court that finds that a person is posing an extreme risk of danger as the result of their possession of a dangerous weapon which is defined to be a firearm or an explosive only so either one of those two things that the person poses an extreme risk of danger to themselves or others the state's attorney or the AG can go in and get an order that prohibits that person from possessing firearms again just like the RFAs there's an emergency order option and a final order option the emergency order I think also lasts for 14 days final order in the ERPO context I think is 6 months so but it can be reduced so that's what you have on the books currently and has been on the books for a couple of years now but as I mentioned the only people who can file these petition for these orders are state's attorneys for the AG what you see the first proposal right here on line 14 is proposing to add household members actually it would be family or household members on lines 19 and 20 would also be able to file for these ERPO petitions remember that and it tracks the language that we just looked at and we just looked at how in the RFA context family and household members can already file so what this does is it sort of parallels the two procedures in the same way that the RFAs already commit to those folks to file that makes sense is kind of the first the first change that's proposed to be made so can you just run through pretty much the whole thing again yeah right over my head a lot of it so right now to file for one of these emergency risk protection orders sorry extreme risk protection orders the only person the only party who can file is the state's attorney or the attorney general they have to be the one who goes into court and files for the order what this proposes to do is to take the same approach that you have in the relief from abuse order remember we were just looking at that the people who can file for RFAs are family or household members so this proposes to add that group to this type of order as well so family or household members could file for an extreme risk protection order the same way they can file for a relief from abuse order thank you do you know how many are there other states that have household members? I did look into that what I turned up was right now there's 18 states that have RFO laws 17 states in DC of those 18 13 12 states in DC allow family or household members to file at the time when we passed this I don't recall that's a good question yeah I was going to I'm not sure I can sort of backtrack and see how many had it's true that within the last couple years a lot of these have been passed in states around the country it's interesting to see how many had household members maybe I'm not sure what was the landscape then and what was the landscape then yeah sure last with respect to IRPOs that's the next sections of the bill you'll see just add family and household members all the appropriate places in the IRPO chapter same topic that we just discussed but the other IRPO piece that you have in here is down on page 14 and what this does and I should point out that this language was already passed by the House and the Senate in the bill that was vetoed by the Governor last year so this piece was in the same waiting period this was another element of that and what it did you may recall that there was testimony last year from a couple of emergency room physicians who were concerned that they were unable to transmit information about patients whom they knew were a danger without violating HIPAA the health insurance basically the federal privacy law around people's medical information so in order to address that what this language you see before you does it essentially permits those communications to be made by healthcare providers without violating HIPAA and what it does HIPAA has an existing exception for you see lines 20 and 21 in federal law there's an exception when disclosure of information is necessary to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the health or safety of a person or the public so arguably they already would have been able to transmit the information even under that existing exception but I think they were just felt more comfortable having it spelled out explicit so what it does is basically defines the HIPAA standard to be HIPAA standard where you were can you scroll down a bit where you were so how can a healthcare provider notify a law enforcement officer around a when HIPAA is involved when HIPAA is a federal law because that HIPAA includes that exception already you may have said that so all I did was just track the IRPO situation and just make clear that that qualifies under the existing HIPAA exception so would not just to get into the an acronyms but the education privacy statute would that be included in this no I don't think so I'm not totally familiar with that statute but I think this is going to apply only to healthcare providers well the thing is the transmission of information is the question so child's involved in this abuse and the mom's in one hospital bed child's in another hospital bed how does that information get transferred on the child because that's a different question it's a good question I'm not sure the answer but I would think we need to get some more information you're right thank you so I mean I just in hearing Tom's concern I think one thing that's really important to know even about the existing language in HIPAA is that people are told up front that things are kept confidential unless it is going to hurt that there are two exceptions to that so it's not like it's not like people weren't told ahead of time it's not a gotcha kind of thing and I think that's really important that that's disclosed when somebody starts counseling or whatever they're told unless I have to report you've got plans to harm someone or you know mandated reporting right so it just seems important to know that and I assume yeah that would be similar to the hospital right so the very last piece actually very briefly the very last section is a bill I think it's might be in this committee right now or maybe with last year H675 which so the last section of the bill and all that does is it clarifies that when the court issues conditions of release on a person when the person is subject to conditions of release after having been charged with a crime that the defendant can't possess firearms or other weapons it's not a it's a ability of the court not a required court may word then they already have that ability this just I think that that's true sure so this will potentially make it more consistent yeah and I think more expressed and more clear and that's the end of the walkthrough oh any other questions that folks have so Eric we have the H30 on the wall right and so I believe it's similar to the release of these portions in here but there are certainly constitutional concerns with that one so my understanding is that that that's been drawn into right so often people come and look at what other bills we have that's very much right yeah yeah I think that the language that specifically reflects the juries Supreme Court's decision that's in there to address the search and seizure constitutional concern is not in H30 so that was added here to address that concern okay alright thanks everybody thank you so much good morning thank you for adding me happy to be able to work with you this year although as I was sitting I was noticing something different about the committee there is a basket full of peanut M&Ms and I've made it nine days my New Year's resolution right I recall a basket of fruiting particularly oranges last year this is this is a change circumstance but I'm happy to be here we look forward to working with this committee and the legislature this session we fully support this bill I'm TJ Dunham attorney general this bill makes sense for public safety and I want to focus on one part of this bill that I think is really the most important part of the bill and Mr. Fitzpatrick did a great job explaining that and we have to talk about domestic violence when we talk about this bill and the point of the emergency orders I will call them TRs temporary relief orders that is the critical time in terms of making sure that people are safe when we talk about domestic violence and to put it into context about domestic violence in the state of Vermont it's a deadly problem in our state between 1994 and 2017 50% of all homicides in Vermont were domestic violence related 55% of homicides were committed with firearms and in 2017 alone we had a total of 17 homicides 11 were domestic violence related and when you talk about going to file for that TR that temporary relief order in family court that is because there is an issue of domestic violence and time is of the essence and I talk about this bill as my experience as a criminal prosecutor yes that temporary order is filed in criminal court but often times family court often times there is a companion criminal domestic violence case filed in criminal court or coming that's also important to point out that a violation of these abuse orders is a criminal charge on a violation of abuse prevention order of that law as well I'd also ask this committee to look at the number of temporary orders that don't turn into final orders Mr. Fitzpatrick so that ex parte order is issued you go to the court you make that petition the court makes a finding and I think Mr. Fitzpatrick said 14 days my experience I can only talk about Chittin County was it was about a week there would be enough temporary orders issued on a Thursday and in every county in our state you had a dramatic decline from the number of TROs that are issued to the number of final orders issued and I think it's important to note that because domestic violence is so complex it's so complex and there's a whole host of factors that go in and from a criminal prosecutor the number of I'll call it the failure rate of domestic violence prosecutions is one of the highest failure rates because the complexity of this issue because it's not just an issue of whether or not there was an act of violence or abuse it's an issue of housing it's an issue of resources it's an issue of children and many victims many women in my opinion make courageous decisions to stay in these really dangerous situations because of the lack of housing you talk to domestic violence advocates you ask what's the number one issue and you hear about housing and so we got to put this all in context when we say why is this so critical to have this bill passed this year particularly at when that temporary order is issued because it's about saving people's lives that's why and the numbers indicate that based on the number of homicides domestic violence that are related to guns and nobody goes to court to take this step unless they're scared they're looking for help and they're putting themselves at risk and then you have to understand the court system that oftentimes you may be on a family court because you've gone to the police the first call is going to be to the police or the prosecutor and we're going to say well let's make sure that somebody filed that temporary order in court there may be ongoing investigation there may be a citation issued that may be 30 days out 21 days out person may be lodged there's no standardization of that you're going to go to court and what if that court issues that temporary order and then you're going home to the person that just abused you so my support of this bill is because of those circumstances and I would really urge you to listen to the survivors of domestic violence if they're willing to testify because it is incredibly complex and it's incredibly dangerous and we have to understand how these systems oftentimes parallel systems don't always complement in terms of the timing and timing is of the essence here how come I'm protecting women so studies have shown that the days following state intervention in domestic violence situation are especially dangerous for the victim studies have also shown that removing guns from the scenes of domestic violence significantly lowers the risk victims will be murdered this bill helps victims and survivors of domestic violence through a number of measures it requires a response to an RFA to relinquish their guns upon the issuance of an RFA both at the temporary time which I think is the critical time as well as the final order of the stage I think due process is protected by the provision at the final order where they send it if the judge doesn't issue the order to get it back but again we're talking about that 7 days to 14 days which I think is a really critical period of time where we want to call it a cool and off period or what but let's make sure that people are safe during this time and I think the due process is protected based on that language at the final order it gives the relinquishment provisioned teeth by instituting a warrant process so that a court can rapidly issue a warrant for police to seize weapons if needed we believe that provision is constitutional as well the application process for the RFA will now include an option to collect information about guns that a respondent may have so that the information needed for the issuance of the warrants is quickly available and doesn't delay the warrant again with the warrant provision I think you're protecting everybody's due process rights so when a an RFA is filed and they served I don't know if I have a great term on Asian but anyway it's filed, it's served so why isn't a vacate the premises or maybe it is served at the same time which potentially could alleviate the people getting back together or just seeing each other, that type of thing and I'm going back to the gun collections that may not have to be you know some pretty valuable firearms people have in that type of thing that may not have to be removed from the premises of the vacate orders I think it's a good point Mr. President, I've been talking about that discretion really poor at that temporary order I mean for me that's the critical time there's a temporary order and I think if I'm understanding your question well if somebody vacates the residents then there's no need for an order to seize the weapons it's not really nothing even to do with weapons at all I mean there may not be any weapons at all I mean hands can do weapons or whatever there's a vacate order that everybody's going to be safer there's going to be a lot less chance of something that to me I'm not a lawyer it just seems like it would be logical I think the key is again for me it's public safety how are we ensuring that nobody is going to be placed in danger because they have access to firearms and to be perfectly honest and I see this as a lawyer as a former prosecutor in general people don't always follow orders we have violations of conditions released we have a battle to go charge you talk to survivors and victims and you say does this piece of paper make you feel more safe I'm not sure they're going to say yes so I think I think the issue of making sure people don't have access to weapons at a critical period of time is the public safety component that I'm focused on I think you compliment that back again at the final order if there's not the final order issued that people don't feel that there is a risk of danger then perhaps the property is returned at that final based on the court's rule that's how I would address it but I understand your point I'm just trying to understand the process of how this works now under current law so what can the court issue something at this point the language in here is that the owner shall can the court the court have the authority to issue something similar to this now sure I think the court can issue anything it wants in terms of uh court orders and you know but it's not standardized and I think that's the issue so the idea is to to create sort of an across the board way of dealing with it in terms of these really dire situations yes and I think again for me why we want to standardize this and bring uniformity across the board is to protect women and children when our numbers indicate the majority of our homicides are domestic violence and related to a gun and somebody who's going to get a relief from abuse order is because they have been abused by a family member or a fear of abuse of a family member of domestic violence and they want to help so it would make logical sense to standardize that practice in order to have that seizure of those weapons at that time are you seeing a reluctance of the court to issue something along this line I can't speak for the court I think in my experience as a prosecutor cases are driven by facts if you put the evidence in front of the court they're going to act accordingly thank you right so I want to thank the committee for considering this bill I think this is an incredibly important bill I think this is about public safety often times of our most normal population the numbers indicate the need for this this is best practice it makes sense in order to pass this bill thank you for having me thank you for taking testimony on for the record Sarah Robinson deputy director at the Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence thanks so much for taking testimony on age 610 this morning and just for the record the Vermont network represents 15 independent nonprofit member organizations that provide direct services and advocacy to survivors of domestic and sexual violence across the state of Vermont and on behalf of our members and the victims and survivors that they serve the Vermont network strongly supports age 610 as we discussed in committee yesterday morning domestic violence homicide is a significant and persistent problem in Vermont and although Vermont does enjoy a low overall violent crime rate victims of domestic violence don't enjoy the relative safety that our state offers as the attorney general referenced half of all homicides in Vermont are domestic violence related and 55% of those domestic violence homicides are committed with firearms so Sarah I'm sorry can you elaborate can you elaborate when you say domestic violence victims don't enjoy the data that I think you're talking about that will generate is going down domestic yes so while the overall violent crime rate Vermont has a second lowest overall violent crime rate in the country there's data that indicates rates of domestic violence indicated by things like the number of domestic violence felony is filed in Vermont is growing so victims of domestic violence aren't experiencing the same safety that the rest of the state is in that information just wondering if there is any information collected that showed a catalyst for that I mean could be a number of things yeah I'd be happy to get back to you on some of that I think there's a combination of factors one is the way that the system is addressing domestic violence with more seriousness looking at domestic violence as a course of conduct rather than an incident based perspective and I also think that there's evidence to indicate that as cultural norms change as the conversation about the Me Too movement has emerged over the past several years that the conversation about domestic and sexual violence is changing and so it's being identified in different ways things were going to my mind were things like poverty, drug abuse things like that those things can exacerbate domestic violence but not necessarily cause it and research really indicates that firearms are one of the leading primary risk factors for domestic violence homicide and for lethality for victims and access to a firearm by an abusive partner increases the risk of death for victims by 500% and there have been multiple studies that have affirm this so behind each of these statistics which I know you have heard in this committee several times is a Vermont who is a victim of domestic violence homicide by firearm and those include people like Molly McLean who is a 27 year old mother in made stone Vermont who was shot and subsequently killed by her estranged husband in 2017 and Molly's story is only one of many in Vermont and is not just similar from Rhonda Gray and Fairly Wanda Sandvill and Windsor Anako Lumumba in South Burlington Erin Allen in Danby and many more and for each of those stories there's families that are devastated and there are communities that are asking what more can be done so in 2018 the General Assembly passed Act 92 which aimed to address the issue of domestic violence homicide and made important progress by allowing law enforcement the ability to remove firearms from the scene of a domestic violence incident and that addressed cases of domestic violence where there is a law enforcement response to a scene but what was left unaddressed by that act was situations in which survivors are seeking relief through the civil court process through the relief from abuse order process and since Act 92 was passed we've also learned valuable lessons about the gaps that remain in our system of response especially how these vary across the state and H610 aims to address domestic violence homicide addressing these issues within the civil protection order process as well as other key protections for victims of domestic violence Thanks Sarah so when you dealt with the criminal that's right do more victims go the civil route in terms of relief from abuse is that generally we also heard from the Attorney General sometimes there are both criminal and civil going on at the same time or maybe the criminal comes after so I can get you some of that data I have the numbers right in front of me of the number of relief from abuse orders that were granted in FY17 which is the most recent data that I have available so yes sometimes it happens concurrently but I would also say that for many many survivors they actually seek the civil court process because they have reservations about engaging the criminal legal system and so the civil process is an alternate path for them they have concerns about their partner being incarcerated or they're trying to seek relief for themselves in a way that isn't escalating the situation in a way that they don't intend to so what I thought I would do is walk through each section of the bill and talk about how it impacts victims of domestic violence if that's all right so similar to the default proceed also known as the Charleston loophole and ensuring that firearms transfer subject to existing background checks are only finalized once the background check has been completed is relevant and important to victims of domestic violence one of the primary reasons that there may be a delay on the completion of a background check is the presence of an existing domestic violence record most often a misdemeanor domestic violence or a final protection order one in nine unlawful gun buyers that's ordered by the federal background check system is someone with a domestic violence record and there was a study that the governmental accountability office did I think it was 2006 to 2015 and they found that in approximately 30 cases where there was an existing domestic violence record by someone who was seeking to purchase a firearm the background check was not completed in three days so that those background checks tend to take longer and so there's reason to believe that if background checks do not come back within three days there might be a reason for that related to domestic violence there's a question that came up earlier about why this would happen and that there might be a criminal record that's not completely clear whether it's a domestic violence offense or not and I was just remembering a domestic violence homicide that occurred in Vermont in which the individual had a record in New Hampshire and I'm not sure if it's still the case but for a long time misdemeanor domestic assault in New Hampshire was called simple assault and so there are ways in which criminal records aren't always clear whether something is infected domestic violence domestic violence crime so that it's going to move on to relief from abuse orders unless there's any questions about that just help us understand why the name is not there so Charleston Loophole was named after the and I'll let every town also speak to the specifics of this but was named after a mass shooting that happened in Charleston and my understanding is that in that case the person was able to access firearms when in fact they should have been arrived at so sections two and three addressing relief from abuse orders are a critical and primary safety tool for survivors of domestic violence and as I mentioned they're particularly helpful for individuals who don't seek to immediately engage law enforcement and there are in the criminal legal system there are many reasons that people might choose to do that but seeking a protection order is also a significant risk for survivors the six months immediately following separation from an abusive partner is the period of highest legality for and risk for victims of domestic violence although the risk does diminish significantly after one year of separation and if granted protection orders are effective at keeping survivor safe over time a meta analysis of studies conducted on protection orders that was published in 2010 so a study of studies indicated that protection orders lead to a long-term lead to long-term reductions in police reported violence in FY 2017 there were 3,125 relief from abuse orders applied for and granted in Vermont and 3,156 orders in that same year ended or expired and so we're disposed of by the court so as orders are coming on to the system many are also leaving as they expire as Eric noted temporary orders are granted for 14 days and final orders are granted for a fixed period and I'm sure Judge Berson can talk about this but most often that's for one year and both temporary and final relief from abuse orders are essential and time limited and they're granted after a judge has made a finding that abuse has occurred and that there is a reason to believe abuse may occur in the future and they provide comprehensive safety mechanisms for survivors including limitations on contact temporary custody arrangements financial support and firearm surrender which can now be one condition that is ordered among many and although this court ordered relief can be lifesaving for victims it's essential that the system of response include targeted interventions that really address the lethality risks and ensure that the conditions of the orders are enforced so currently there is significant variation across the state in the rates of orders that are granted and the conditions that are included in those orders because firearms are such a well established risk factor for lethality we believe that firearms ought to be addressed in each relief from abuse order proceeding starting with the collection of information from both plaintiffs and defendants about the firearms accessible to the defendant and I just wanted to note that the Vermont's Fatality Review Commission made this recommendation to Vermont Judiciary in 2015 for something similar that firearms be addressed in every relief from abuse order proceeding exactly that currently there's one question on the petition for relief that addresses weapons broadly but because we know about and I think in parentheses after there's also an opportunity to talk about think firearms is mentioned on that form but we certainly believe that addressing firearms because there is such good research on that as a distinct lethality risk factor that it ought to be addressed in every proceeding you spoke about the differences around the state of how the relief from abuse orders are sort of handled a couple of concerns about that is there support available for victims going into the system to know what they can ask for and how to ask for and how to ask for and how to ask for and how to ask for and how to ask for and advocate for themselves in these really touching situations and is it along the lines that there's not support for people to know what to ask for or that the courts are actually denying options that would be available to them is that data that you know great question so I would say on the first piece of that providing support to survivors as they're applying for relief from abuse orders and attending hearings for final orders is one of the primary things that our member organizations do and most of them across the state are in court every week on what we prefer to do is RFAA to provide support to survivors that doesn't mean that all survivors have access to an advocate or choose to work with an advocate and the second question was about variations across the state more is it there's a hesitancy to apply all the variability or that we're not getting information out to ask for that's a great question so I would agree with the attorney general that the court is often looking at the factual evidence that's presented to them so part of that we believe which is one of the reasons it's included in this bill is asking the right questions and making sure that they are eliciting the right information so that they're able to determine whether firearms are a concern for many years what we have kind of the entire system of response has asked victims to talk about the incident that brought them there today whether it's law enforcement or the courts to talk about kind of the most severe incident and in many cases of domestic violence homicide they haven't previously been shot so the most severe incident that they experienced may have been physical abuse but the thing that's the lethality factor is the firearm that's sitting fully loaded or used as a threat all of the time so I think that asking the right questions specifically about firearms will certainly help to standardize the approach to that across the state thank you I'm sorry coach just an interesting point on your question yesterday major Jonas was here from the state police and she's in charge of training and retention of troopers they're working on new protocols utilizing a lot of the lethality data that's been supplied by the network and so when a trooper would arrive in a scene they would use a very standard protocol to have the scene and hopefully get to those questions during that process so that's part of their piece she mentioned that yesterday just to make sure so there's variation across Vermont related to how often and whether firearms are ordered surrendered as part of relief from abuse orders and recognizing the risks that are really inherent in this kind of geographic variation many other states have uniform responses to firearms and protection order proceedings so 30 other states prohibit all people subject to final relief from abuse orders from possessing or purchasing firearms and 10 other states prohibit all people subject to temporary or exparte orders from possessing or purchasing firearms and in addition there have been several homicides where people where firearms have been ordered surrendered but the defendant then goes and resides at a residence where they have access to firearms and so that's another thing that's important so in order to in addition to actually ordering the surrender of firearms it's equally important that when the order is served the conditions are enforced and once an order has been issued by the court law enforcement is tasked with serving that order to the defendant and we've heard from law enforcement that they often lack the tools needed to ensure firearms surrender can be enforced in 610 attempts to address this concern by creating a process through which the warrants can simultaneously be ordered when probable cause is present so in that piece of the bill we're listening to our colleagues in law enforcement trying to respond to their concerns Any questions about the relief from the abuse order? Section 4 related to prohibited persons as Eric noted federal law creates certain categories of persons who are prohibited from firearms possession including people subject to qualifying protection orders but the same protection does not exist under state law and this creates a troubling loophole from local oversight so if an order is issued that does not specifically list firearms surrender as a condition the possession or purchase of a firearm by someone subject to a relief from abuse order can be prosecuted under state law as a violation of the protection order so the person may still be prohibited from possession under federal law but that can only be prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney and while we're extremely grateful for the U.S. Attorney's cooperation she actually prosecuted one such case in the very last year we would like state law to more closely mirror the federal law prohibiting possession by a person subject to a relief from abuse order and allowing state attorneys to prosecute these violations. Section 5 related to data collection since the passage of Act 92 implementation has been buried across the state and the committee heard that in testimony from Major Jonas yesterday the data collection requirements included in section 5 will assist in efforts to ensure equitable geographic access to justice and the safety measures that are reported by the act. In addition the law enforcement field has indicated that challenges remain related to storage capacity on the local level for non-evidentiary firearms and collecting data on the number of weapons stored by law enforcement agencies pursuant to this bill will assist in really helping us to define the scope and extent of those storage limitations. Section 6 to 11 I know that other witnesses will be speaking to extreme risk protection orders but the Vermont network is supportive of efforts to allow family and household members and medical professionals to apply for extreme risk protection orders and we believe that these changes will create an important pathway for individuals with knowledge about imminent risk to personal and community safety to seek relief from the court. I mentioned this yesterday but there is an interesting overlap between suicide and domestic violence A, many domestic violence homicides are murder suicides but the other interesting piece is that threats of self-harm or suicide is actually often a tactic that's used by a viewers to coerce and control a partner and so we feel like there's relevance for the extreme risk protection order for victims there as well. And section 12, the Vermont network supports clarifying the language that criminal conditions may include orders not to possess firearms. So there are three changes to age 6-10 that the network would propose and two of them are relatively technical and one is more substantive and I'd like to just touch on those. So in section 2 there's language that says if the defendant testifies under oath that they do not have firearms, firearms do not need to be ordered and surrendered and we would suggest changing that language to if the defendant testifies credibly under oath. It is 1103 C4 If the defendant testifies credibly under oath that they do not have firearms the firearms do not need to be ordered and surrendered. So the language as it's written now we believe it would allow someone who even has firearms or there may even be some evidence that they are in possession or can access firearms to go in and simply testify under oath that they don't have them and then the court does not need to issue or surrender. So we would like the court to be able to have a little bit more discretion around the credibility of that testimony. So how are they going to determine the credibility? I'm going to let David share speak to that when he testifies. Thank you. Maybe I'll hear more from David as well. I see and understand the concern. That's the best way to get at it. I think there needs to be clear that there should be a finding by the court based on that kind of testimony and whatever other evidence there may be of the existence of firearms to determine that. But I do appreciate the concern on that. Thank you. Section 3 of 1104 is at the temporary stage C2. So currently the language and the bill requires the plaintiff to state with particularity at the emergency stage the type and location of any firearm in the defendant's possession ownership or control or that another person possesses owns or controls on behalf of the defendant as part of their petition for emergency relief. And while we strongly support the court inquiring of the plaintiff in every case about firearms in the emergency petition we do not believe that plaintiffs should be required to answer this question. And such a requirement could jeopardize a survivor's self determination and their safety. Are you suggesting alternative language or striking this? I'm not suggesting striking it. I would be happy to submit some alternative language as well. Question? And finally a more substantive issue is that the current bill does not include any mechanism for monitoring by the court to ensure that firearm surrender has been completed by the defendant. So in effect the order is served the court never doesn't have any way of necessarily knowing whether firearm surrender has actually been completed unless the victim themselves reports a violation of that order. And in many ways we're relying on the honor system with these orders. So in many other states there are systems for monitoring compliance that do not result in burdensome requirements for the court system. And so the Vermont network would recommend that language is added to require the defendant to submit an affidavit of compliance the next day after the order is in effect. And if an order of compliance is not filed then the court would set a show cause hearing as they do for domestic assault arraignments. So it's a mechanism for the court to have some confidence that the firearms have indeed been surrendered and that the defendant is taking that condition seriously. Are you at minus? Yep, I would be happy to do that. Just a question about the necessity for that. So if the whole process is being set up such that the relief from abuse order is issued along with the warrant presumably when that order is being served it's right at that time that law enforcement would say hand over the firearms. So I guess I'm just not sure the way we set this up why we also need this and maybe we do. Sure, absolutely. So the information that may be included in the order and in a warrant, so the warrant's going to require additional specificity in particularity about location and types of firearms and especially at the temporary stage that information if received will have come from the plaintiff and the plaintiff may not have a full understanding of every firearm that is in the defendant's possession or control. And so by submitting an affidavit of compliance the defendant is themselves affirming that they are in compliance with that condition of the order including access to all firearms. So for domestic assault show cause hearings can be scheduled for the next business day so the hope would be that if the defendant does not file this affidavit that it is treated by the court as a violation of the order and the court sets a show cause hearing. So in a situation where say the list is made of guns, potential guns that somebody owns and on the list it says there's five guns over at the Jones's house the person who has had the relief from abuse order filed against them says I don't have any guns there. Can you repeat your question just one more time? Sure. There's the list of guns on the list it says there's five over at the Jones's house and the person who has the relief from abuse order filed against them says I don't have five guns over at the Jones's house. Is that Mr. Jones or is Mr. Jones No that's not Mr. Jones that's the person that's been accused of abuse. At a separate location. That's a good question I'll defer to the Attorney General's office to answer that question. Does that can proceed potentially maybe there's no guns there in some of these houses somebody's getting a warrant there's house search for no reason Well I think that I appreciate the question and I think that's one of the reasons that there was built in some protections in that the warrant can only be issued if there's probable cause and the probable cause requires certain information available to the court and so I feel like that creates some assurance that that warrants aren't going to be ordered without probable cause by the court Let the court talk about what kind of information they need to make a finding of probable cause I just want to back up a little bit You started 55 cases of domestic violence Is guns? So half of all homicides in Vermont are domestic violence related and 55% of those homicides are completed with firearms And how many homicides were there? I can tell you that 17 So that was just in one year 17 was in one year and 11 of them were domestic violence homicides and I don't know if that was last year or before looking at Are you seeking this total number of domestic violence homicides that were completed with firearms? Just last year Just last year Do you know of those 11? Caroline Hansen How many were firearms? You can get that for you Then the other thing is you also said if I heard this correctly Vermont is the second lowest state overall in the country Our overall violent crime rate is the second lowest in the country but that safety is not enjoyed by victims of domestic and sexual violence Is there any data out there why were the second lowest? I'm not aware I'd be happy to look into that Curious if this may be able to answer your question I was going to wait Thank you I've wanted to ask since we are the second lowest the domestic violence is going up but where do we stand as far as the rest of the country Related to domestic violence I'm happy to get you that I just have the Vermont numbers right now I would be more than happy to let you know that the trends are looking like nationally and how we compare Did you speak to the sender for the Violence Policy Center? Is that a partial answer to that question? So that is a partial answer to that question in that the Violence Policy Center report which I referenced in testimony yesterday ranked us eighth in the country most recently in our per capita rate of domestic violence homicide so that gives you some kind of relative idea based in that year how Vermont compared to other states so it's eighth best or eighth worst and we've been in the top ten in that report twice in the past five years that that report's been issued so we're I try so we're back on the record next witness is Ms. Williams Thank you Good morning everyone My name is Keegan Mays Williams and I am policy council in the northeastern and southern regions of the United States at Evertown for Gun Safety and I'm here today to talk to you about two policies but before I do I just really wanted to thank this body for the immense work that it's done in closing the private sale we pull you know that a lot of other states so thank you for that wonderful work and I also want to thank you for being one of the top ten states to enact extreme risk protection order legislation so all I'm here to do today is to talk to you about a couple of ways that you can make your wonderful laws even stronger and I'll start with the Charleston loophole so just to make sure that I'm sure that we're all very familiar with what happened in Charleston South Carolina in 2015 Not necessarily so thank you so much if you could Yes, so Okay, on June 17th 2015 the Charleston shooter walked into a Bible study in a very famous black church in South Carolina he sat with people who invited him to fellowship even though he was a stranger and they allowed him to sit with them for about an hour before he took out his firearm and he began to shoot he hurt nine people three people survived and what we've learned later is that this person was actually prohibited federally from possessing or purchasing a firearm hence the name Charleston loophole and that is how the name came about so please if anyone needs to stop me I just wanted to walk through the process of how the Charleston loophole works and I'm assuming I'm just going to start as if no one understands how it operates and please interrupt me if I'm saying more than is necessary to make it clear so what we learned later is that the shooter was actually prohibited and he was prohibited because he had a felony drug conviction which prohibits someone from being able to purchase or possess a firearm so the way that these criminal background checks actually work is that a federally licensed dealer is allowed legally to begin to conduct a background check on an individual however after three days if there is not a response which clears the person one way or the other the firearm dealer is allowed to proceed with the transaction whether or not there has been an actual result determining whether the person was prohibited or not so this is how it actually works in practice there are two ways that a firearms dealer is able to check on someone's criminal background one they can use something called e-check which is an electronic search the other way is to call them the phone and I think this way is historically the way that most firearms dealers have checked but more and more people are starting to use e-check so I'll walk you through the process of getting on the telephone as a firearms dealer so an individual walks into a federally licensed firearm dealer store they say that they intend to make a purchase they fill out a form a federal form and on that form they offer their name and other personal identifying information from the information on that form the dealer will make a call to the customer service representative and the customer service representative can say three things the first thing they can tell you from entering the name and other identifying information is whether the person is prohibited there might be an alert that says you may not proceed with the sale this person is prohibited and then of course the firearm dealer cannot go forth with the sale two, within seconds the customer service representative can tell the firearm dealer who may go forth this person is not prohibited now the reason that we're here today is to discuss that third area that it's a little bit murkier and that is when there is an alert that says there should be a delay because I'm not certain whether this person is prohibited or not now this can happen for several reasons now there in different states record their criminal convictions in different ways so for example you are prohibited from purchasing a firearm if you have been convicted of a felony for example now some state records may show that a person has been convicted for an assault but it may not show that it's actually a felony rather than a misdemeanor so it will be incumbent upon the person that works for the FBI to reach out to local sheriff's office police department court offices to find out further information to find out whether or not the person is prohibited another way that a person is prohibited is because they have a domestic violence conviction whether it be a misdemeanor or a felony so another thing that that may be alerted is that this person I will just use the assault example again this person has an assault conviction but what may not be clear is whether the person is guilty of assaulting someone in a bar fight or whether the person is guilty of assaulting their spouse and so you may have to again reach out to local authorities to understand to understand exactly the context and that may take some time but usually it can take only a few extra minutes in fact the customer service representative allows the dealer to stay on the phone and I will refer you to this FBI report that's on the overhead in a moment but the goal of NYX is to make sure that the dealer is on and off the phone within seconds but what we've learned is in 2008 on average the calls last a little bit more than two minutes this calls do not take a long time these checks do not customarily take a long time but when it is important to reach out to local institutions or local agencies that may take a little bit more time so what we also know is that there are circumstances another prohibiting factor excuse me is if someone someone is prohibited if they have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution now there may be an alert that someone has been admitted to a mental institution but without reaching out specifically to that institution it's not clear whether that commitment was in fact an involuntary commitment or a voluntary admission into the institution so those are some of the circumstances where you may have a delay now to go to walk through the process a little bit further so what happens is after three days the firearm dealer can decide to legally continue with the sale whether or not they have actually received the results of the background check now if the firearm if the firearm DR excuse me now what you should also know is that the FBI continues to search whether or not the firearm dealer proceeds with the transaction and the FBI keeps track of the results and we found that what happens is if the FBI finds out that the person is actually prohibited they will reach out to the firearm dealer and ask whether or not the sale was made and if in fact the sale was made then FBI will reach out to ATF and ask and then that person who was prohibited that was able to go through with the sale they will be put on a firearms retrieval list now as you can imagine the ATF is a large agency which may be overburden and we know at least in one case the case of the Charleston shooter his gun was not taken away from him in time so in terms of the amount of time that this actually happens the actual frequency I'll refer you to the FBI report from 2018 and I'm going to direct your attention to page 20 and committing others this either has to be posted or it is posted okay so what we can see here on this chart is that in 2018 4,200 in 240 different circumstances the background check came back as a denial and what we know of those 4,240 individual denials is that in those cases 3,960 of those transactions the dealer decided to proceed with the transaction anyway so in the status quo without a Charleston loophole closure in Vermont we're leaving it up to firearms dealers to use their discretion to decide whether or not the person will likely come back as prohibited or not if you close this loophole you won't have to have any concerns about that now of the 280 remaining transactions it's not clear whether that transfer was made or not or whether the firearms dealer to withhold from completing the sale but I think what this statistic shows you is that in 3,960 circumstances the firearm dealer is likely to make that sale now there are thousands of firearm transactions a year as I'm sure we can all appreciate and 4,240 transactions is bit an actual small percentage of the overall amount of transactions but if you consider that the shooter in Charleston was one of those transactions and obviously he's not a part of this particular statistic because that that occurred in 2015 but to imagine that there are 4,240 instances where a prohibited person may hurt someone I think that the numbers are sounding so while it is not a great percentage it is a great number of prohibited people carrying firearms so I think that is really the key point that I'm trying to make today excuse me, yes the 4,240 those are just the background checks that were the default proceed they actually shouldn't have they were prohibited they actually ended up being prohibited but is there a statistic as far as how many default proceeds there are in total is that a part of the statistics in here as well? well if you take a look at the report you will see that well basically I should be clear that this report only covers 2018 2018 was the 20th anniversary of NICS so there are numbers within this report that cover the amount of denials there are in total but if you take a look at the chart on page 20 and the chart on page 21 it gives a further breakdown of circumstances where the the delay and further the categories of where the delay occurred I hope I'm answering your question well I'm just looking at how many actual delays there were because this is a subset it may have ended up for some portion of those delays that they found out the person wasn't prohibited there was not necessarily any follow up but is that statistic out there somewhere that this is the number of times there has been a default proceed result at the end of the day we know that 4,000 some shouldn't have been transferred to be honest I'm unclear of the exact number of delays that occur but I do know that since this report has come out that different states have taken steps to make sure that the records are more clear so that there are fewer delays that there are the circumstances where it is unknown whether the person is prohibited or not or lessened but I do not have that exact number but I offered you this report as context this is the more important statistic for what we're doing but I'm just curious thank you and the other thing that I was going to add is that there are actually 19 states in addition to DC have chosen on their own to close this loophole because the federal government the loophole still exists in the federal government so there are other states that understand the need to actually have an effective background check one that is not just reported but actually completed so unless there are any other questions on this topic I'm happy to move to the next one I'm not sure if you're the right person to ask this question so if you're not just letting me know but I'm kind of curious what the experience is like for states who have moved forward with something like that what I'm specifically concerned about is what is the time frame that you're looking at that you're actually stopping someone from how long is someone on hold or on the average that you're waiting for this check to come in because I'm assuming the three day window was put in so that there was sort of at the time there was a reasonable time frame of the next expectation of when that check would be done what does that actually look like in practice well that's a great question because it seems as though considering the check only takes about a few seconds at sometimes only two minutes it seems that three days should be sufficient then there are circumstances as with the Charleston shooter where just a little bit more time may have been helpful so some states have extended that time period to ten days but I do not know the actual numbers of how long it's actually taken the firearms dealer to actually complete the sale but if there are concerns that a person who is otherwise not prohibited would have to be unfairly impacted by waiting which I think is at the heart of your question my understanding is that well one if you are not prohibited then immediately the records will come back reflecting on the people that this may affect most are people who is unclear whether or not they're prohibited and you know I think that once the FBI has been able to ascertain whether or not a person is prohibited after looking locally into the records it doesn't seem to be an issue that would happen again because now there is an actual there is an actual answer and as you probably also well know after a criminal background check is issued after 90 days the criminal background check has to be removed from the system so it doesn't remain in the system afterwards the check is made each time there's a transaction thank you yeah a follow up question I seem to recall having seen that statistic somewhere that said that on average the default proceed adds a lot of time if that's something you can see if you can track down since you probably have access to lots of information you may not know right off the top of your head but I'm pretty sure that I've seen that statistic somewhere before if that's something that you might be able to that the default proceed just how long does it usually take if it takes more than three days how long does the FBI on average take to determine whether a person is or is not prohibited if it's not the immediate one if it gets into the default proceed process how long does it on average take and I can find out whether or not there is an average but what I will say is that in case I wasn't clear before when there is a delay and there is a telephone call typically it's not a circumstance where the dealer is told there is a delay and tells the buyer the prospective buyer that they need to come back typically the dealer stays on the phone with the person from the FBI and waits so the implication to me is that it may take a little bit longer because it doesn't necessarily take multiple days but I think that the purpose of closing the loophole is to give extra buffer just to be very sure that someone who is not supposed to have a weapon does not have a weapon along the same lines with the three day waiting period and I apologize if you said it earlier if I was out of press conference so three days is going to catch no doubt there so any days that are added after that you're going to chip away at that 4,000 plus number so my question is you may not know has there been attempts in Washington to make this change federally by going to an extra day some different procedures that type of thing I do believe that there are bills in order to advocate for closing the Charleston loophole on the federal level but it has not been passed which to me would make more sense if the states are going to start doing it individually and you know there's some states that won't do it but that encompasses everybody that way and everybody's under the same rules and to me just a day four days on the the sketchy applications we can't affect Washington from here I would prefer for there to be a federal law but in the meantime you know I would communities to protect themselves until the federal government is able to do so and in your materials do you have a list of states who have closed the loophole and whether or not they have certain days and their timeframes if any I have in my comments and I have a list in my notes it's not in the FBI report but I can forward that information to you or tell you right now but I can just one more what was the number is it around 4,200 years say 4,280 or something like that so that's one year so how much does that fluctuate over different years I gotta assume it fluctuates some I have to be honest that is something I also have to get back to you on the FBI issued this report in 2018 because of their anniversary their 20th year anniversary and this is the report that was quite telling but as you said I'm sure the numbers have changed and fluctuated because other states have done their due diligence to make sure their records are more clear so there are fewer delays but I'm not sure alright so next I would like to move to the other life-saving gun violence prevention legislation that this body has worked very diligently to address and to thank you for that so as you are all aware the extreme risk protection law is a law that allows the prosecutor's offices and the attorney general's office to remove a fire to petition the court to remove a firearm from someone who is experiencing a crisis and has made it clear that they may be a threat to themselves or others so currently there are 17 states in D.C. who have this legislation but as I said earlier Vermont was one of the top 10 states to do so I think you were the 7th so thank you for that so in your current bill you allow law enforcement primarily to be the petitioners of the court so what I would propose today is that you add family members to petitioners that are able to directly petition the court question natural question is why why is this so important and the response that I have for you there is because in circumstances where someone is experiencing a crisis time is absolutely of the essence and I understand that when law enforcement is the first point of contact there are occupational hazards which make delays inevitable full disclosure I was a criminal prosecutor for 10 years before I started my work at every town and I absolutely appreciate the delays that may occur just because of the nature of the job so the way that I understand that this process works in Vermont and I actually spent a lot of time reaching out to local prosecutor's offices all over the state and from the reading of the statute I had my ideas of how it might work in practice and where delays might be invented but I thought it made make more sense to actually reach out to the people who were actually doing the work and talk to them and get a sense from them what the process looked like in practice and what I learned is even though prosecutor's offices are able to directly petition the court family members are an integral part of the petition process they are the people who are the ones that notice when their loved one is going through a crisis they're just the first ones to notice so what typically happens in Vermont based on my understanding from speaking to people over the last two days is what first happens is that an individual needs to go to their local police department they need to file a report or complaint about some that they witnessed some behavior that they found to be concerning at that point a police department has to assign that report to a police officer there needs to be an investigation and during this investigation the police are responsible for making sure that there is a sworn affidavit from each and every witness attesting to this threat once they have completed their investigation then they go to their local prosecutor's office and then once they get to the local prosecutor then the local prosecutor has to take a look at the form and I remember doing this in my own practice as a prosecutor you have to make sure that law enforcement has asked the right questions you have to do your own legal assessment of whether or not the standard has been met and then if there are follow-up questions you need to take the time to ask those follow-up questions make sure that the standard has been met all before you go to the court and ask for the petition now most prosecutors I spoke with said that it could take up to a week and it makes sense there are certain prosecutor offices in the state that are only part-time there are certain places that only have seven employees it's a smaller state but for a person who is experiencing a crisis every extra hour really counts I'm going to offer you a statistic in Vermont the rate of gun suicide is 87.5% that is the biggest crisis occurring in Vermont right now and ERPO is the best tool in order to remove a firearm from someone who is truly in crisis and may want to hurt themselves and what we know is that family members are usually the first ones to know that a family member might want to hurt themselves so if a person has to spend the time to reach out to an overburdened or a very busy police department who has to take the time to conduct the investigation who then has to take the time to take it to the prosecutor's office who needs to make sure that all the forms are filled up correctly and then finally get it to the court during court hours it can really add a lot of time to the process now if a family member I apologize I want to make sure I understood that statistic could you repeat that again, 87.5% I'm not sure I understood so of the firearm deaths that occur in Vermont 87.5% of those deaths are suicides or firearm suicides is that clear so the death the firearm deaths that occur in Vermont are homicides are intentional shootings are there are a lot of different categories the largest category overwhelming the largest category is firearm suicide for all firearm deaths yes, in Vermont okay okay, thanks and another statistic that I will flag is that the rate of gun suicide by firearm in Vermont has increased by 58% between 2008 and 2017 so it's a real crisis here in Vermont and having a family member be able to speak with the court directly I believe would be a really exchegiate way to make sure that relief is received when it should be received another issue that I encountered when speaking with one of the local prosecutors over the last few days is that some judges do not allow for hearsay in their court they hear from the police officer what a family member told them they witnessed or what they heard and some judges do not accept that information so now you have to take time to reach out to that family member if Vermont if this body was to add family members to the list of petitioners we would clear up the hearsay problem further limiting the time taken another issue is that most of the people that I spoke with told me that many of the cases that they encounter where an urban petition was sought were cases where someone made a threat to harm someone else and a few of those circumstances involved actual person hurting themselves and since we know that death by firearm in terms of suicide is the biggest threat in Vermont I think it's clear that some family members don't think to reach out to law enforcement when their person is at risk of death by suicide I don't think that it's a critical conclusion for most people to reach out to the police when their loved one is having suicidal ideations so that is just another reason why I think it would behoove the court to allow the family member to have direct contact with the court now there are 17 states in DC as I said of those 17 places including DC 13 of those places have family members as petitioners because they also appreciate they also appreciate that family members are such an integral part to this process I will tell you that although urban legislation is really new it takes some time to kind of understand those numbers but one thing we know is that in Maryland when given the option of either reaching out to law enforcement or directly petitioning the court as a family member there is an almost 50-50 split of family members reaching out on their own in Oregon I believe the split is 66-33 in favor of law enforcement but what I'm seeing in that result is that maybe with greater outreach and education family members know that this tool exists and that they can reach out to the court themselves in order to get as quickly as possible yes so I'm wondering if in any of these situations or scenarios it seems like it's easier if somebody is in crisis or family member to loop in either the physician or the therapist and have them help make the report because that might be easier on a family member and I don't know if that's something that's been explored because again you're right it isn't a logical conclusion to think of my loved one is in crisis and I'm going to call the police especially if you've been here for a few days you've probably heard about some of the unfortunate situations that have happened with law enforcement and people that are struggling with mental illness the outcomes are not always great and so I think a lot of loved ones will not want to reach out to the police and it's scary to go to court so are other categories like family friend family physician looked at as an effective tool what I will say is that you know opponents of ERVO legislation in general tend to focus on the mental health portion of why ERVO may be necessary and in our organization we like to focus on the fact that the person is either in a long-term crisis or temporary crisis some of the crises that we see you know a relationship has gone sour and maybe it's not a mental health issue exactly but terrible things happen in people's lives and sometimes in a very rash decision you just may need some time to think and be without your weapons so that you don't make a rash decision so I think that's the reason that we have not focused on the doctor aspect because I think that many of the people who ERVO could help don't actually have actual physicians or people that are helping them with long-term issues but I will say that there are other states and I guess this is a good time as any to go to the ERVO chart there are other states that have allowed not sure if I'm doing this properly well you have it in your I'll look at it before me I'm not exactly sure how to get but you'll take a look at your chart and you will see that medical professionals are a part of they are a part of the petitioner process in other states so it's not unheard of but we tend to think that it may distract other people from focusing on the fact that you can be in a crisis in a less than formalized way so that's the only reason that we tend not to advocate for that but I hear your point like for example in Burlington we have street counselors that are in touch with people who probably don't have a lot of access to we're not going to a therapist once a week and so they need somebody who's more erratic so it does seem like every time there's a mass shooting it's always like finding a work or you know like so somehow somehow encouraging people to do more than just say oh gosh that person was acting kind of weird maybe part of an educational campaign to say you know what I'm not sure we want everyone going to court either but it does seem like what we ask bystanders to do are family helpers and I agree with you because family members are involved anyway it's just an issue of when they can be involved and how quickly they can be relieved is there any data that when a family member gets involved by reports a potential problem what the rate is of something bad happening to that family member rate of so I've heard people discuss this and I think that you're probably talking about a domestic violence context which I defer to my colleagues to answer but what I have learned honestly from speaking I'm a little more prosecuted than Vermont and also from some of the work that I do in Florida that in large part these orders tend out to be not adversarial at all in fact in most cases there's a stipulation that's entered where there isn't even a hearing that the respondent comes to court and they stipulate that you know what I think I could benefit from having my firearm removed but in some cases they're not and actually that statistic is a surprise to most of us and I will say that we are slowly getting more statistics because most legislation is very new but in the places where I have been able to not gather formal research but I've been able to speak with judges who have presided over ERPOs and most recently when I've been able to speak to prosecutors in New York State and the few circumstances where they have petitioned the court for ERPOs they have not had to have a hearing that most people agree that they're not feeling well at the moment and that they could benefit from having your firearm removed and that was actually really surprising so I guess that's a longer response to your question is I have not heard that I have heard that concern but I have not heard that reality well I very much appreciate your time and I will get back to you with all the follow up places unless there are any more questions for me thank you any other thank you very much thank you everybody I'm going to adjourn us now it's close to lunch and a number of people that weren't able to testify today and also were not ready to testify so my plan is to take this up on Wednesday morning