Lawmakers pass ban on ‘bump stocks,’ other rapid-fire devices

With the Hawaii State Legislature set to adjourn in a week, lawmakers gave final approval Wednesday to several significant bills, including a measure that would make it illegal to sell or own “bump stock” devices, like the ones used last year by a gunman to spray gunfire into a Las Vegas crowd.

The Senate voted 24-0 to approve Senate Bill 2046, which would ban the manufacture, import, sale and possession of devices that can be used to modify firearm triggers to fire almost as rapidly as automatic weapons. It prohibits bump fire stocks, multiburst trigger activators and trigger cranks.

The bill previously passed unanimously in the House and now goes to Gov. David Ige for approval.

“The idea is you don’t want to be able to take a semi-automatic gun and turn it into an automatic gun by basically a technological trick,” said Sen. Karl Rhoads, the bill’s lead sponsor.

“We don’t want a repeat of something like what happened in Nevada. The guy killed 58 people in, what, just a few minutes. We don’t want to make it easy to do that,” Rhoads said, referring to Las Vegas gunman Stephen Paddock.

Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others when he opened fire from his hotel room window into a crowd of more than 20,000 concertgoers before killing himself Oct. 1 in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Investigators would later find at least a dozen of the 23 firearms recovered from Paddock’s room were semi-automatic rifles legally modified to fire like automatic weapons.

“We have a very good record on gun violence here, and we’d like to keep it that way,” Rhoads (D, Downtown-Nuuanu-Liliha) said.

Lawmakers in both chambers also officially passed the $14.4 billion state operating budget for the upcoming fiscal year along with a separate funding package to provide $100 million in emergency funds for Kauai flood relief efforts and $25 million for Oahu.

“This budget does not just fund our short-term needs but it outlines our priorities and a plan for the future,” said Senate Ways and Means Chairman Donovan Dela Cruz, noting that the spending plan supports initiatives in agriculture, economic development, education and health care.

The budget includes $15 million for homelessness programs and services; $7.1 million to increase payments for foster caregivers; $4.5 million for three new ambulances, one each on Kauai, Hawaii island and Oahu; $1.2 million for the Kupuna Caregivers program; and $1.1 million for recruitment and certification of public school teachers.

Rep. Nadine Nakamura (D, Hanalei-Princeville-Kapaa) thanked her colleagues for moving “with lightning speed” to provide the Kauai relief funding in 10 days via Senate Bill 192.

“While I would not wish this extreme rain event on any community, I’m glad that Mother Nature came down hard while this Legislature is still in session,” Nakamura said.

In addition to providing the emergency funds, SB 192 would deposit more than $80 million in tobacco settlement funds into the state’s Emergency Budget and Reserve Fund, also known as the rainy day fund. The state constitution also requires a separate deposit of $44 million into the rainy day fund because the state has had budget surpluses for two consecutive years, said House Finance Chairwoman Sylvia Luke.

The rainy day fund will have a balance of $440 million at the end of next fiscal year, Luke (D, Punchbowl-Pauoa-Nuuanu) said.

Lawmakers also have agreed on a pair of tax bills that would increase the amount of money that is withheld from real estate sales by out-of-state owners of Hawaii property, and made technical “conformity” adjustments to the state tax code.

Senate Bill 508, which won final approval in the House and Senate Wednesday, would increase the withholding on real estate sales by out-of state owners from 5 percent to 7.25 percent. That money is withheld to ensure the state is able to collect taxes owed by the previous owners, and Luke said tax officials expect that change will allow the state to collect an extra $8.1 million in taxes owed next year, and an extra $2.6 million each year thereafter.

The state also needed to approve changes in the state tax code in response to the federal tax changes approved by the U.S. Congress last year, but state lawmakers refused to go along with a number of the federal changes.

Known as the “conformity bill,” Senate Bill 2821 actually deviates from the new federal law in a number of ways, and will allow the state to collect an extra $9 million next year. Luke said some of the extra revenue will be generated by eliminating corporate deductions under state law that were also phased out under federal law last year.

However, the state will not conform to a number of the new federal tax provisions. For example, the new federal law caps the federal tax deduction for mortgage interest at $750,000 per year, but SB 2821 does not include a similar cap. For state tax purposes, the mortgage interest cap will remain at $1 million, Luke said.

Another difference is the tax deduction allowed for payment of state and local taxes. The new federal law would cap the so-called SALT deduction at $10,000 per year, but Hawaii lawmakers declined to adopt a similar cap.

The measure is positioned for final votes in the House and Senate on Friday.