Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee killed a bill that makes a change to the certification process when transferring certain firearms.
Currently there are two ways to purchase a firearm. One way is to create a trust. The other is to obtain a signature of the local chief law enforcement officer. House Bill 1205 says that officer shall, within 15 days of receiving the request, provide certification if that person is not prohibited by law from receiving or possessing the firearm. Essentially it changes what is currently a “may” to a “shall”. Representative Jim Stalzer is a prime sponsor of the measure.
“This does not in itself give the person permission to purchase anything,” Stalzer says. “The person must then go through a full ATF background check which typically takes three months to up to a year. So it’s a gateway process for the chief law enforcement officer to sign off. You’re still going to go through the full background check, and actually once the ATF has finished the background check you still have to go to the firearms dealer and go through a national incident check at the time of picking it up.”
Stalzer says all House Bill 1205 does is prohibit a chief law enforcement officer from refusing to sign the certification without proper reasoning.
But opponents of the measure, like Senator Craig Tieszen, say this currently isn’t an issue in South Dakota, so the bill isn’t needed.
“This is not likely to be a problem,” Tieszen says. “I don’t foresee our local sheriffs or the other officials or officers that are named here, I don’t foresee them being adversarial to this process. And I think the track record currently substantiates that.”
Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted six to one to send House Bill 1205 to the 41st legislative day.