Senate Judiciary hears walkthrough of H 606 to make firearm theft felony, expand enforcement for prohibited possessors and add machine-gun parity

Eric Patrick, counsel to the committee, opened with a section-by-section walkthrough of House Bill 606, which he said combines several discrete firearm procedures into four main changes.

Patrick said the bill's first section would "make it a 10-year felony if the property stolen is a firearm of any value," removing the usual $900 monetary threshold that distinguishes misdemeanor from felony theft for property. He told the committee the draft uses the federal definition of "firearm," which generally excludes antiques and muzzle-loaders.

The second section addresses the statutory category of "prohibited persons" who may not possess firearms because of prior convictions. Patrick explained the bill preserves Vermont's existing list of violent convictions but raises penalties for second or subsequent violations: while the offense is now a two-year misdemeanor, the bill would increase penalties for repeat offenders to a higher felony-level term in the draft.

Section three was the most technical, Patrick said, because it ties state enforcement to a subset of doctrines already recognized under federal law. He quoted the federal statute, noting that "under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4) any person who has been 'adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution' is prohibited from possessing firearms under federal law." He described how federal definitions and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reporting work, and explained that the draft largely narrows, rather than expands, the class of persons affected compared with the broader federal prohibitor list.

The committee pressed on questions of knowledge and constructive possessionfor example, whether a prohibited person riding in a car with a gun in the trunk could be prosecuted. Patrick cautioned that the bill language does not explicitly include a "knowing" mens rea in every provision and that courts often resolve such issues by reference to constructive-possession principles and prior case law.

The bill's fourth section would add a state machine-gun prohibition that parallels federal definitions and ATF registration exceptions (pre-1986 grandfathering and authorized law-enforcement or military registrations), Patrick said. Committee members asked about the ATF's technical determination process for whether a particular device meets the federal "machine gun" definition.

Caroline Wilson of the Attorney General's Office outlined a proposed amendment to create a uniform statewide process to monitor court-ordered firearm relinquishments. She described the Firearm Surrender Compliance Working Group (Act 64, 2025) and said the amendment would require a court hearing to approve third-party storage, permit law enforcement to partner with Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to store non-evidentiary firearms, require background checks for third-party custodians, create an acknowledgment form documenting where surrendered firearms are stored, and extend limited civil immunity to FFLs and law enforcement who follow the statute. Wilson said the amendment removes ammunition from the required storage list and allows agencies that lawfully dispose of unclaimed firearms to retain sale proceeds after notice and statutory time periods.

Supporters and witnesses included representatives from the Department of States attorneys (who signaled support for the theft and repeat-offense penalty changes) and public-safety and victim-advocate groups. The Vermont Network Against Domestic and Sexual Violence and several gun-violence survivors urged the committee to adopt the mental-health prohibitor and surrender-compliance measures, arguing those steps would make court orders meaningful and reduce domestic-violence fatalities. On the machine-gun language, a firearms analyst for Everytown for Gun Safety warned about easily manufactured conversion devices ("Glock switches," auto sears) and recommended broader rapid-fire-device language or explicit conversion-device prohibitions to give state law enforcement additional tools.

John Rose, the Solicitor General, provided constitutional context and told the committee that, under Supreme Court precedent (Heller, McDonald, Bruen and recent restraining-order jurisprudence), laws that bar the mentally ill or people adjudicated as dangerous, and bans on unusually dangerous weapons such as machine guns, are within longstanding historical traditions and are defensible in court. He said a state-level prohibitor tied to court findings of dangerousness, together with a relief-from-disability process, strengthens the state's ability to enforce the prohibition while leaving a process for rights restoration.

Committee members repeatedly asked operational questions: whether voluntary FFL participation would be sufficient (DPS provided that about eight to ten FFLs are currently participating in a storage network), how to track surrender and release across law-enforcement and court systems (questions remain about integrating VALOR data and court service forms), and whether the bill's mens rea provisions could lead to unintended prosecutions of people who lack knowledge of a firearm's presence.

The committee did not take final action during the hearing. Senators said they would consider staff drafting changes to mens rea language, evaluate the feasibility of the FFL storage model and examine the surrender-compliance amendment's operational details before any vote.