Committee advances bill on machine gun conversion devices
House Majority Whip Jason Nemes, R-Middletown, speaks on House Bill 299 during Tuesday’s meeting of the House Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection Committee. A high-res version is available here.
FRANKFORT — Legislation that would make it a class C felony to possess a machine gun conversion device advanced Tuesday in the House Veterans, Military Affairs, and Public Protection Committee.
House Bill 299, sponsored by House Majority Whip Jason Nemes, R-Middletown, creates new statutory language that makes Kentucky gun law on machine gun conversion devices mirror federal law on the subject.
“This bill before you couldn’t be any simpler,” Nemes said. “All it does is mirror the federal law with respect to these machine gun conversion devices, which says that you cannot knowingly possess machine gun conversion devices.”
As discussed in the bill, machine gun conversion devices are parts, or combinations of parts, that convert regular firearms into machine guns. Machine guns are defined in federal law as weapons that can shoot more than one shot without manually reloading by a single function of the trigger.
“This bill does not make anything illegal that is not already illegal,” Nemes said. “Things you can do today, you can still do after passage of this bill.”
Louisville Metro Chief of Police Paul Humphrey testified with Nemes on the bill. He said that the legislation would be an important tool for Kentucky law enforcement to get these devices off the streets.
“What this allows us to do is, when we encounter these devices, we do not have to turn them back out to the street,” Humphrey said. “Right now, we would turn that weapon right back over if the federal government was not willing to step in and take it over as a federal case.”
Furthermore, Humphrey noted that the bill would allow Kentucky law enforcement to better keep Kentuckians safe from the dangers of these devices.
“While we might have someone who is on our radar as being involved in violent crime, and we need to get them off the street in order to save the lives of our community members, we do not currently have the ability to do that without depending on the federal government,” Humphrey said.
Rep. Myron Dossett, R-Pembroke, thanked law enforcement for the work that they do in Kentucky and spoke in favor of the bill.
“I want to thank the police officers for the job that they do in our communities to keep us safe, and if this bill helps in any way, I’m proud to offer you my support,” he said.
Rep. T.J. Roberts, R-Burlington, spoke against the bill, first on constitutional grounds. He noted that when the first machine gun was patented in 1718, it was not regulated or banned. He also raised some practical concerns with the bill.
“There are devices known as forced reset triggers, which utilize the energy of slides to reset triggers while still allowing the guns to be considered semi-automatic. This state law does not affect those devices. If we take these off the street, criminals will just switch to those devices. I am not sure if this law has any real benefit,” Roberts said.
HB 299 now moves to the full House.