Legislature OKs Bill to Cross Check Gun Licenses with Psychiatric ER Cases

The Suffolk County Legislature on Tuesday voted unanimously to institute a gun control measure that will raise a red flag in cases where a pistol license holder is involuntarily taken to the hospital for psychiatric reasons.

The system will cross-check the county database of pistol license owners and the names and addresses of individuals who are involuntarily transported to Stony Brook University Hospital's Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program. If a match is made, the pistol licensing bureau will automatically be notified so as to begin an investigation.

Suffolk Legis. Kara Hahn, D-Setauket, who sponsored the bill, called it "a common sense measure that moves us toward the goal of keeping guns from individuals too unstable to have access to such a weapon."

“In the days following all mass shootings there is always a search for missed warning signs,” Hahn said in a statement. "An involuntary transport to a psychiatric emergency room should be a red flag of an individual’s mental state.  My goal is to never have to look back following a tragedy and ask how this warning or that red flag was missed."

The measure is similar to the NY Safe Act of 2013 in that it establishes that cross-check between potentially unstable people against a to-be-created registry of pistol license holders. Whereas the state's law puts the onus on mental health officials to report potentially unstable individuals who are "likely to engage in conduct that will cause serious harm to themselves or others," Hahn's bill requires police officers to immediately report CPEP transports.

According to Hahn, the Suffolk County Police Department transports more than 3,000 people each year to the CPEP at Stony Brook after deeming them to be a threat to themselves or others.

The legislature's unanimous vote on Tuesday codified the policy, which had been informally adopted once the police commissioner heard about it.

"When Legislator Hahn brought this idea to my attention, I implemented it immediately because it has the potential to save lives," Suffolk County Police Commissioner Edward Webber said in a statement.