Ghost guns weren’t yet prevalent in the territory in 2019 when the Virgin Islands Code was amended to address firearms with obliterated serial numbers. Two years later, the Senate was working on a bill specifically outlawing the guns assembled from parts lacking identification numbers. Monday, Acting Attorney General Gordon Rhea urged lawmakers to add one sentence to make possessing a firearm without a serial number illegal.
“Ghost guns are being produced without serial numbers, and those guns are entering the territory,” Rhea told the Senate’s Rules and Judiciary Committee during the second code revision symposium.
Rhea also suggested amending the VI Code to give judges more leeway in assigning probation after a person is released from prison and to expressly state people sitting on government boards can’t be sued for their board’s actions.
“For example, the act should clarify that members of public boards have absolute immunity for actions taken within the scope of their board duties. It should also define claims to include acts by employees, representatives, and agents of the government and its instrumentalities, including people serving on boards,” Rhea said.
Changes to the tax code, including property taxes, were also needed, he said, as well as changes requiring the Attorney General’s Office to only represent the executive branch and give the attorney general the option to appoint representation to representation to autonomous and semiautonomous agencies.
Many other changes were needed, Rhea said, and more necessary changes would surely be discovered as experts review the code.
The Legislature’s code reviewer, former senator and attorney general Iver Stridiron, agreed with Rhea’s suggestion that the committee create subgroups where subject matter experts would get into the minutia of each law.
Stridiron said he’d read every page of the 34 titles of the code, parsing each word and mark of punctuation. Still, testifiers from the Attorney General’s Office, V.I. Lottery, Human Services Department, Bureau of Motor Vehicles, Division of Personnel, and others had identified needed changes beyond the 82 Stridiron had suggested at the symposium’s first meeting Aug. 19.
Committee Chair Sen. Diane Capehart said people from various agencies had suggested 125 amendments so far.
Some of the laws in question date back to the 1920s and many had not been thoroughly reviewed in a generation or more, testifiers said.
Patrick Sprauve, assistant director at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, suggested many changes in the law for clarity and streamlining operations, from vehicle inspections to parking regulations to license suspensions. In one area of the VI Code, two laws actually conflict with each other, he said.
“218A exempt seniors and handicapped persons from paying the title fee, while section 436 offers a reduced fee for seniors and the handicapped,” Sprauve said. “We have many seniors and an increasing number of persons that are deemed disabled, we can no longer continue to bear the cost of purchasing, printing and labor that are associated with the issuance and management of vehicle titles. The language in Sections 218A and 436 needs to be changed from handicap to disabled persons or disabled citizens.”
V.I. Lottery Executive Director Raymond Williams decried illegal gambling and urged senators to amend the law to stiffen penalties to provisions covering gambling, prostitution, and human trafficking.
