 Good afternoon and welcome to Vermont House Judiciary Committee and we are taking up S4 which was it's an act relating to procedures involving firearms. The bill was just referred to us from the from the Senate. I'll ask Eric to do a quick overview. I don't think we need to walk through. This is S30, what's originally S30 that that passed the legislature and was vetoed by the governor. And so this is what's is being referred to us compromise bill because they're going to tell us there's daily change in the bill from S30 from 30 days to seven days in the fall proceeds section. With that good afternoon and welcome Eric. Good afternoon. Thank you. And good afternoon to everybody. This is Eric Fitzpatrick with the Office of Legislative Council here to talk with the committee as the chair mentioned about Senate bill number four. S4 just recently came over to the House from the Senate. And a moment or two of background and the chair started to cover this. You S4 is essentially identical to S30. The bill that the legislature passed that this committee and and this body in both bodies in fact passed and sent to the governor a couple of weeks ago with one change is only one substantive or actually one change at all between S30 and S4. But the vehicle on which to send legislation to redraft legislation to send it back to the House from the Senate was S4, which was originally a a firearms waiting period bill. But since S30 had already gone through the legislative process and been vetoed by the governor, there had to be another vehicle if legislation on this topic was going to proceed again this year. So S4 happened to be in the Senate Judiciary Committee had was actually from the first year of the biennium last year. So the bill that you have in front of you is a strike all to S4. It strikes everything that was originally in S4. And it replaces it with exactly what was in S30, except for the one change that the chair mentioned. And that one change is very simply to do with the default proceed process. I'm sure you remember well that process the committee discussed it at length. The idea there is that under under federal law, when a firearm is transferred and a background check is conducted, the inquiry is made to the national instant criminal background check system NICS. And if there's no response provided by NICS to the to the to the dealer, who then the proposed transfer, sorry, if there's no response provided within three business days. So that's the key operative period of time under federal law. There's no response provided within three business days, then the transfer may proceed. Now, it's not a requirement that the transfer doesn't have to proceed the the transfer or it doesn't have to go ahead with it, but it is permitted. So that's the federal background, but you may remember in S30 what passed the legislature was essentially a repeal of that default proceed process so that the way the language in S30 was phrased, the transfer could not proceed until a positive response was gotten back from NICS that the person was not prohibited from possessing a firearm. So there was no longer any default proceed process that would apply to a transfer. Instead, the person who was transferring the firearm and the dealer who was conducting the background check could not proceed couldn't go ahead with it until they got this response from NICS saying, you know, background check is complete and that person's not prohibited from possessing. So that's the provision that was formed the basis of the governor's veto. And in response to that, the Senate has made a change in the language in S4, which goes to a period of seven business days. So it is a variant of the default proceed process that still exists, but it's lengthy. So instead of not having a default proceed process at all, it's longer so that if the the inquiry is made to the to the next system about a proposed purchaser of a firearm and no response is received from NICS within seven business days and emphasizing business so you don't count weekends or holidays, if no response is received within that time, then the transfer may proceed. The seller may go ahead with it. Again, same as before it's not required, same as under federal, I should say it's not required that the transfer proceed, but it may. And that is the only difference between what you see before you in S4 and what you pass in S30. The other provisions are exactly identical pervade of no no language change at all. So that's that's basically it. That's the change. Thank you. Thank you, Eric. Any questions about the language? Thank you. And so in terms of the Senate, believe the only witness the Senate heard from was J. Johnson, the governor's counsel. We did invite her, I mean, for this, for S4, we did invite her to testify. I haven't gotten an update, but as earlier Amber had not heard back, but she was clearing her testimony that that seven days is acceptable to the governor and that there were no that the governor was supported or was fine with the rest of the bill. But it was really just this one, one section of 30 days. That was the subject of the veto. So but I thought it would be helpful for us to hear from from Chris Bradley and then Sarah Robinson, just give them give them the opportunity to just to state on the on the record, their thoughts about S4. So good afternoon, Chris. Welcome. Afternoon. Thank you very much, Chair grad. We greatly appreciate the ability to give very brief testimony on S30. Excuse me, S4. For the record, my name is Chris Bradley. I am a registered lobbyist. I'm also the president and executive director of the Vermont Federation of Sports Clubs. Again, I'd like to thank Chair grad and the committee to allow the Federation to give testimony on what is now S4. Regarding section one, which is 13 BSA 4023, the state of Vermont already had a statute 13 BSA 3705. It was working to keep guns out of hospitals. When the bill was initially submitted, it included daycares and government buildings. But those facilities were later removed because representatives indicated that 3705 worked and worked well for them. In regards to how 4023 will be enforced. It is an identical process to 3705. With 3705 law enforcement could use discretion to resolve a conflict with the outcome being fines and even jail time if the situation could not be resolved amicably. This was as opposed to having strict liability, no discretion, no jail time, and only a minor fine. We do acknowledge that hospitals are places where emotions can run high. We do not, however, believe that this new law will stop violence in hospitals if someone is intent on carrying out such a heinous deed. And we conjecture that the number of people who may be cited under this new law will be zero. Regarding section two, that would be 13 BSA 4019. The Federation agrees that firearms should not be possessed by people who should not have them. We believed, however, that there was solid rationale for the default proceed to occur after three full business days as per federal law. And that in those rare situations where a firearm was allowed to be transferred due to a default proceed, they were followed up bound by the FBI and the ATF. Regarding sections three, four, and five, we did not object to these sections, although we will say that the change to 13 BSA 4021, which would be the large capacity ammunition feeding devices, will become moot when the Supreme Court of the United States rules on the issue of high capacity medicines. Regarding section six, studies show that violence decreases after an RFA is filed. We know that temporary RFA cases are decided by the weight of a feather. We know that when a temporary RFA is granted, over 50% of the time those cases never go to a final hearing due to the cases being withdrawn or dismissed, which means property will be likely seized just to be given back within two weeks. We know that at one point it was stated it was a rare occurrence that a judge would order relinquishment in a temporary RFA situation, but we now know that these are occurring with greater frequency. Well, we can now say that DV violence goes down after an RFA is filed for the simple reason that there is visibility on the DV situation. We are deeply concerned that this may well foment violence when people have their possessions taken without the due process of law, without any liability for damage to those firearms being stored and transported back and forth. We reiterate our opposition to this bill, but we do thank the committee and Chair Grad for the opportunity to speak to it. Thank you. Thank you. Any questions for Chris? Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Sarah Robinson. Welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for having me. For the record, Sarah Robinson from the Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence. And thank you so much for your consideration of S4 today. The bill that you are considering and have spoken about earlier in this session includes several important provisions impacting victims of domestic violence, and the network supports S4 as passed by the Senate. We've previously testified in both this committee and in Senate committees regarding the important improvements included in this bill related to firearm possession in hospital buildings, improvements to the extreme risk protection order process, and most importantly, codifying and clarifying the available forms of relief for survivors in emergency relief from abuse order proceedings. Our position and testimony on these items have not changed and we're heartened to see each of these components in the bill before you today. But today, I just wanted to speak very briefly about the one piece of the bill that has changed, the so-called Charleston loophole, also known as default proceed firearm transfers. As Attorney Fitzpatrick outlined, S4 includes a seven-day default proceed provision pertaining to firearms and federal background checks. In our view, this represents a modest but still very important improvement over the current status quo three-day period. According to a study from the Government Accountability Office, when a firearm transfer is denied because the purchaser is prohibited by law, the most common prohibition is a record of misdemeanor domestic violence. Domestic violence records are also a primary factor in firearms transfers where the background check is not returned and those that require additional investigation. In those so-called yellow light background checks, additional investigation is needed to determine whether a potential purchaser is in fact prohibited by law. And to make this determination regarding misdemeanor domestic violence records, it takes the FBI between nine and 10 business days on average, according to the best available data. So the seven-day default proceed provision included in S4 will undoubtedly represent an improvement over the current practice and law by providing additional time for these investigations to be completed. Sarah, before you go too much further, can you repeat what you were saying about the nine and 10-day thing with the FBI? Gladly, yes. So when there are those so-called yellow light cases where the background check is not returned and the FBI needs to do additional investigation to determine information about an individual, a potential purchaser's record, when they are doing those investigations and they ultimately result in a denial of the background check, for those denials that are related to misdemeanor domestic violence, they take on average between nine and 10 days to complete those background checks. Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you. Yeah, and excuse me. A follow-up question. Is that nine and 10 business days or calendar days, if you know? It is business days. Thank you. So the seven-day default proceed provision that's included in the bill that you're considering today will undoubtedly represent an improvement over the current practice, will hopefully net more of those misdemeanor domestic violence denials by providing some additional time for investigations to be completed. And I just wanted to note that, you know, and I'm sure it comes as no surprise, but as a matter of policy, the Vermont Network supports fully closing the Charleston loophole as was proposed in previous legislation, simply because we do not believe anyone who's prohibited from possessing a firearm due to domestic violence should be able to purchase one. But we absolutely believe that the seven-day window included in this bill is a clear improvement, and we support the bill and we encourage you to pass it swiftly. Thank you. Questions? No, no, don't see. Don't see any questions. Thank you. So I have the schedule said committee discussion possible, but we're going to hold off because we have two members of our committee or in a house human services on the adoption bill, so we'll wait for them to come back. And was, yeah, yeah, but we could still, we could still vote today. So and I think that was it, so I think I would like to take a take a recess right until Kate and Kam come back. So just keep you posted. I would keep the this open. End of the live stream, yeah, yeah, but we'll keep the film open. I'm gonna hop on, I'm gonna see if I