PROVIDENCE — Rhode Island lawmakers on Wednesday voted on the second bill in a fast-moving package aimed at stemming gun violence in Rhode Island.

The full Senate, for the second year in a row, approved a bill to ban the possession and manufacture, sale or possession of so-called "ghost guns," including untraceable 3D-printed guns without serial numbers. The vote was 34-to-3.

The House Judiciary Committee vote 13-to-2 in favor of a similar bill that includes a provision the Senate leadership does not believe is necessary: an additional 90 days for gun owners to properly register their handmade guns with federal authorities. That, at least temporarily, creates a stalemate, since neither bill will make it to the governor's desk to be signed into law until the House and Senate agree on, and pass, the same version.

For now, the two chambers are moving ahead with conflicting versions of a bill to address what the state's top cops call a growing problem.

While police suspicions that a "ghost gun" was used in the recent murder of a Pawtucket woman were dispelled by a crime lab analysis, Col. James Manni, the head of the Rhode Island State Police, told lawmakers at hearings last week that the guns have started to make their way into Rhode Island's criminal world.

Of 52 firearms seized by state police from a motorcycle gang about a year and a half ago, he said "11 were ghost guns where the person who was making them was hired by this criminal enterprise ... to sell to other criminals so no one could trace them."

A “ghost gun” is described as a firearm, “including a frame or receiver, that lacks a unique serial number engraved or cased in metal alloy on the frame or receiver by a licensed manufacturer or importer.”

In response to concerns about antique firearms, the legislation specifically exempts “a firearm that has been rendered permanently inoperable or a firearm that is not required to have a serial number in accordance with the Federal Gun Control Act of 1968.”

Steven Brown, executive director of the ACLU of Rhode Island, opposed the legislation on a single ground: the ACLU opposes mandatory penalties. Advocates for the law dispute Brown's reading of the legislation.

The way the Senate bill is worded, anyone convicted of violating the proposed new law "shall be punished'' by "not more than 10 years [imprisonment] or by a fine up to $10,000,'' and with the exception of a first conviction, "shall not be afforded the provisions of suspension or deferment of sentence, nor probation."

The House Judiciary Committee a day earlier approved a bill removing any doubt that applications to buy a gun, anywhere in Rhode Island, go to the police chief in the purchaser's hometown for review.

This bill was prompted by the gaps in existing state law that came to light after a man with a history of making suicidal and homicidal threats purchased a gun in Richmond. The man used the gun a few days later to kill one person and injure two others in his Westerly housing complex, before turning the gun on himself.

The Senate has not yet held a hearing on the Senate version of the bill.