The deal was cut months ago. There would be a four-bill package of gun control bills that would be worked and passed this year. Two bills would start in the House, two bills would start in the Senate, the bills would be passed and moved to the other chamber, where they would be passed.
The two House bills were HB 125 (Longhurst), which prevents the possession and manufacturing of ghost guns, and HB 124 (Griffith), which ‘prohibits a person who is the subject of a Protection from Abuse Order of the Family Court and who knows or has reason to know, that the Order has been issued from purchasing, owning, possessing, or controlling a deadly weapon or ammunition for a firearm in this State’.
The two Senate bills were SB 3 (Lockman), which:
…1) Creates an application process to obtain a handgun qualified purchaser card to authorize the purchase of a handgun. While an applicant will incur costs related to fingerprinting and required training, a fee will not be charged to obtain the permit. (2) Requires licensed importers, manufacturers, or dealers, as well as unlicensed persons, to require an individual to present the individual’s handgun qualified purchaser card before selling or transferring a firearm to an individual. (3) Requires that an applicant complete a firearms training course within 5 years before the date of application, similar to what is required by Delaware’s concealed carry permit law. An individual licensed to carry a concealed deadly weapon is exempt from this requirement as they must already complete a firearms training course to be licensed. (4) Sends to law-enforcement information that is already collected at the time of sale and required under federal law to be made available to law-enforcement. This change assists law-enforcement in the criminal investigations they already conduct’; and
SB 6 (Sokola), which:
… creates the Delaware Large Capacity Magazine Prohibition Act of 2021. The Act includes clear definitions for the term “large-capacity magazine,” as an ammunition feeding device with a capacity to accept more than 17 rounds of ammunition. After enactment, possession of large-capacity magazine will be a class B misdemeanor for a first offense and a class E felony for any subsequent offense. Those who possess a prohibited large-capacity magazine when this Act takes effect must, by June 30, 2022, relinquish the large-capacity magazine to a law-enforcement agency in this State.
HB 125 passed the House on May 18 and, per the agreement, passed the Senate unamended on June 15.
HB 124 passed the House on May 18 and, per the agreement, passed the Senate unamended on June 15.
SB 6 passed the Senate on April 1, cleared the House Judiciary Committee on April 27 and…languished in the House until June 23. On that date, an amendment that cut the guts out of the bill was added on to the bill, and the bill then passed the House by a 24-16 vote. Two of the sponsors of the weakening amendment, Bennett and Bush, still voted no on the bill. Kim Williams said that the amendment was needed b/c she could have been considered a criminal under the initial bill. In other words, her weapon of mass destruction was covered in the bill, therefore the definition of that WMD had to changed. Uh, isn’t that a conflict-of-interest? What the House did violated the spirit of the deal that had been cut. Leadership could have stopped this. Instead, Popgun Pete, along with fellow ex-cops Mitchell and Cooke, were co-sponsors of the amendment.
Perhaps even worse was the fate that befell SS1/SB 3. The bill passed the Senate on April 1. The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee on May 11. Pistol Pete reassigned the bill to the House Appropriations Committee on May 17, ostensibly to ensure that funding for the bill’s implementation would be included in the money bills. The funds, in fact, were included to cover the costs of the bill’s mandate.
However, the bill sits in the Appropriations Committee to this day. Good Ol’ Lumpy Carson kept the bill bottled up, never even scheduled a committee meeting. He would ONLY have done it at the urging of Pissant Pete.
In other words, Speaker Pete and the Kop Kabal broke their promise to the Senate Democrats. The Senate D’s passed the two House bills and sent them to the Governor. The House D’s blew up one bill and buried the other.
The Senate Democratic Caucus learned a difficult lesson this session: The House Democratic leadership can’t be trusted.