Lawmakers approve task force on gun-safety issues

RIGHT APPROACH? Sandy Kane, owner of Kane’s Gun Shop in North Kingstown, said he doesn’t have any major concerns about three approved gun-safety measures. / PBN FILE PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD
RIGHT APPROACH? Sandy Kane, owner of Kane’s Gun Shop in North Kingstown, said he doesn’t have any major concerns about three approved gun-safety measures. / PBN FILE PHOTO/BRIAN MCDONALD

A package of nine bills designed to strengthen Rhode Island gun laws got whittled down to three that were approved by lawmakers in the final days of the 2013 session of the General Assembly.
The measures were proposed, like others across the country, in the wake of the shooting massacre that killed 20 students and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012. Those that failed, including a proposed ban on assault weapons, met stiff opposition from local gun dealers.
Lawmakers did approve creating a task force to examine how the state can address the link between firearms safety and mental-health issues, increasing penalties for carrying a stolen firearm while committing a violent crime and making it unlawful to possess a firearm with an obliterated identification number.
“I think a lot more could have been done this year on gun safety,” said Sen. Joshua Miller, D-Cranston, the Senate sponsor of a bill that failed to win legislative approval this year – the Gun Control and Safe Firearms Act, which would ban the manufacture, sale, purchase or possession of semi-automatic assault weapons, as well as high-capacity magazines, belts and similar devices.
“There’s a group of us that won’t stop introducing legislation that’s important to stopping gun violence,” said Miller, who plans to reintroduce the bill next year.
“Legislation can be a frustrating process, especially when you’re trying to save lives in your community.”
Sandy Kane, who has owned Kane’s Gun Shop in North Kingstown for 34 years, doesn’t have any major concerns about the three approved bills. A spokesman for Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee last week could not say if the bills would be signed into law.
“I don’t think they infringe on anyone’s rights,” said Kane.
One of the three creates the Behavioral Health and Firearms Safety Task Force, which is to address “the nexus between behavioral health and firearms safety ” and “to propose legislation and recommendations to support the state’s full participation on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” Rhode Island does not currently submit substance-abuse or mental-health information to the NICS database. The task force will make recommendations to the General Assembly on the state’s participation, or as some argue, nonparticipation, in this federal information system.
Federal forms filled out at gun shops currently ask if a potential gun buyer has “ever been adjudicated mentally defective, which includes determination by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority, that you are a danger to yourself or others or incompetent to manage your own affairs or ever been committed to a mental institution,” said Kane.
A very similar question, with slightly different wording, is on the Rhode Island form, said Kane. The potential buyer answers with a “yes” or “no.”
The FBI gets the information on the federal form and the state form goes to the local police department, which does a Bureau of Criminal Identification background check, said Kane.
The gun dealer then gets word on whether the application is approved, delayed or denied, he said. A delay is usually because the person may have a name or information similar to someone who has committed a felony, he said.
The language of the bill leads Rhode Island American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Steven Brown to fear the task force may start with the presumption the state should fully participate in the federal program, rather than simply investigate it further.
“It appears to answer one of the major questions the commission is supposed to be examining – whether the state should participate in this federal program,” Brown said of the federal background check.
“Some who testified on the issues said it could discourage individuals from seeking treatment if they know they’re going to be putting their name in this database,” said Brown. Newport County Mental Health Center President and CEO Bud Cicilline, who served a decade as a state senator, also urges caution in deciding whether to report the mental-health records of Rhode Islanders to a national database.
“As a clinical psychologist, I have to point out that a person with mental illness is no more likely to commit an act of violence than the general population,” said Cicilline. “People with mental illness are more likely to be victims because of their vulnerability.”
The task force should seek information from experts and carefully examine any possible consequences of including those with mental-health diagnoses on the NICS registry, he said.
“Mental illness is not a perfect science. It’s not black and white,” said Cicilline. “If your name goes on the list, there should be a way for your name to come off the list.”
The 20-member task force, which has to issue a report on its findings by Jan. 31, 2014, includes three members of the Federated Rhode Island Sportsmen’s Club.
“As far as the task force, I think it’s important we’re going to bring both sides together and hopefully something is going to come out of it that will reduce crime that won’t interfere with our second-amendment rights,” said Nick Grasso, president of the 5,000-member Federated Rhode Island Sportsmen’s Club.
He supports all three bills passed by lawmakers.
“I think they took all things into consideration and passed the bills that had the highest impact on reducing crime,” said Grasso, who testified at the Statehouse on the bills.
The bill to ban assault weapons, which didn’t get approval, wouldn’t have prevented the Newtown killings, Grasso said, based on testimony he heard from Connecticut police. What are commonly called assault rifles, Grasso said, are correctly identified as modern sporting rifles.
“We have numerous gun clubs and they have competitions that use those rifles,” said Grasso. “It’s not different than a rifle I would use to go deer hunting.”
Also gaining approval from the General Assembly was a bill sponsored by Sen. Adam Satchell, D-West Warwick, and Rep. Marvin Abney, D-Newport, that increases the penalty for carrying a stolen firearm while committing a crime of violence.
The penalty for a first conviction is increased from a possible prison term of five to 10 years to a term of five to 15 years. The bill also makes it unlawful for anyone to knowingly possess a stolen firearm.
The third firearms-related legislation approved increases the penalties for the manufacture, sale, purchase or possession of any firearm that has an altered or obliterated mark of identification.
With only three out of nine proposals from the package approved, Rep. Linda Finn, D-Middletown, said, “The three bills are certainly a step in the right direction, but I’m disappointed in how it turned out, especially about not passing the bill about assault weapons and magazines with high capacity.”
Finn sponsored a measure that was separate from the nine-bill package backed by Chafee, Attorney General Peter Kilmartin, legislative leadership and law enforcement officials. The bill, which was held for further study, required that information regarding registration of firearms “be retained and maintained, rather than destroyed.”
She plans to reintroduce it in some form next year, possibly after getting more information from police and the attorney general to make it stronger.
“It’s not just about gun violence in the cities. It’s in the suburbs and across the state,” said Finn.”We have young people committing suicide with guns. There are gun accidents in the home. Our children are being killed.” •

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