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Panel adopts amendment and approves bill letting crime lab limit mandatory firearm submissions
Summary
The committee adopted an amendment and passed HB1217 to allow the State Crime Lab discretion to accept only firearms that produce forensically useful data for entry into the national ballistic database; the director said about 42% of firearms currently submitted yield no probative result for the database.
Senator Garner introduced House Bill 1217 with Carmen Channel, director of the State Crime Lab. Channel said the current law requires law enforcement to submit all firearms found in connection with a felony for entry into the ATF-run National Ballistic Database; the Crime Lab cannot perform probative testing on many types of firearms and the database cannot reliably use their profiles.
The committee adopted Senator Garner's amendment changing mandatory language ("shall") to permissive ("may") and narrowing the submission requirement to firearms that, based on current science and ATF database capabilities, are reasonably likely to produce useful ballistic-comparison data. Director Channel told the panel about 42% of firearms submitted for database entry produce no actionable results; the amendment, she said, would reduce unnecessary intake and return unneeded firearms to law enforcement more quickly.
After discussion about laboratory training and law-enforcement guidance, the committee adopted the amendment and voted to pass HB1217 as amended.
