The U.S. Virgin Islands government is currently being sued by the Department of Justice over several of its draconian gun laws, but the litigation isn’t stopping the territory’s legislature from working to enact even more restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. Now the territory’s sole Second Amendment advocacy group claims the legislature is suppressing the voices of gun owners, in part by scheduling hearings with little advance notice.
Getting to the legislature to testify can be a time consuming ordeal for those who don’t live on the island where hearings are taking place. Flights from St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. John are the easiest way to get from island to island, but it can still take some preplanning and it’s not exactly cheap either.
Kosei Ohno, the founder of Virgin Islands Safe Gun Owners, says on at least eight separate occasions since September 2025 lawmakers have taken action to deny him and other gun owners the ability to testify.
1. Sept. 4, 2025 — Homeland Security hearing: the committee heard from three government testifiers in favor of the Bill, but even over the noted opposition of Sen. Fonseca, it refused to have VISGO’s written opposition read into the official record. The Attorney General was permitted to speak for 14 minutes and the other testifiers were seemingly provided at least ten minutes each. The VISGO letter would have taken no more than 8 minutes to read into the record- a practice regularly done in hearings. Instead, Bill 36-0144 was rushed to the Homeland Committee floor only days after receiving a public tracking number.
2. Sept. 8, 2025 — A committee meeting was canceled about five minutes before VISGO’s testimony after members waited roughly six hours in the gallery; half a dozen supporters had traveled between St. Thomas to St. Croix to attend.
3. Follow-up Rules & Judiciary meeting (Sept. 15, 2025): after Senator Clifford A. Joseph, Sr. stated the Bill would be brought back, VISGO attended, but the Committee declined to take up the bill.
4. Committee of the Whole (Sept. 17, 2025): VISGO attended again expecting the promised hearing of Bill 36-0144; it was not.
5. Oct. 9, 2025 — Scheduled Rules & Judiciary Committee hearing: Invited testifiers Conn Davis, Sgt. Bernard Burke (VIPD Ret.), former Firearms Director, and Kosei Ohno, who had submitted their testimony in writing beforehand to the committee were denied the opportunity to place their opposition testimony on the record despite Senator Carla Joseph’s attempt to have the testifiers be heard. The Legislature gallery was full of VISGO members and those who were opposing the Bill.
Instead, Senators spent more time debating whether to permit the testimony than it would have taken to actually have heard it.
6. Oct. 17, 2025 — Scheduled Homeland Security Committee Hearing Invitation #1: VISGO accepted an invitation by Senator Clifford Joseph to testify; after notifying the Chair VISGO intended to appear, testimony was submitted ahead of time, the hearing was canceled.
7. Nov. 20, 2025 — Scheduled Homeland Security Committee Hearing Invitation #2: another scheduled opportunity to testify was canceled after VISGO advised it would appear.
8. Feb. 13, 2026 — Schedule Homeland Security Committee Hearing Invitation #3: With major revisions circulated by the committee at the last minute and only approximately 11 business hours to respond, VISGO’s meaningful public testimony was effectively impossible and the VISGO was again denied a fair opportunity to be heard on the record at the last-minute due to cancellation by the committee less than an hour before the testimony. Mr. Ohno had already travel to St. Croix from St. Thomas during the height of the Agrifest 2026 with very limited and expensive travel options.
As Ohno says, eight times isn’t an accident. It’s a pattern.
Virgin Islanders should not have to rearrange work and family time, spend money to travel between islands, and draft testimony in good faith—only to be shut out of the record again and again. If the Legislature wants public trust, it must end the procedural gamesmanship and run a fair, transparent process.”
As introduced, the bill would require legal gun owners to surrender or sell “prohibited firearms,” which include the vast majority of modern sporting rifles. It also requires taking a safety training course in order to possess a rifle or shotgun, bans suppressors and magazines that can hold more than ten rounds, and places further limits on concealed carry licensees.
I’d love to tell you about the major revisions to Bill 36-0144, but while the legislature’s website theoretically allows for the tracking of bills, the link to the amendment to 36-0144 gives you a 404 error.
The repeated last-minute cancellation of hearings is truly infuriating, and it certainly suggests that anti-gun members of the legislature are intentionally playing games in order to stifle the opposition from exercising their right to be heard.
The least I can do is give Ohno a platform, and he’ll be joining me on Wednesday’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Company to discuss the runaround he and other gun owners have been getting, as well as the latest changes to the gun control bill the anti-gunners don’t want us talking about.
Editor’s Note: 2A groups across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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