Democrats to EXPAND NICS gun control scheme

February 20, 2007

Green Bay, Wis.—Grassroots gun owners have had plenty of time learning to despise the National Instant Check System (NICS), a gun registration scheme aimed at harassing and cataloging law-abiding gun owners—a system avoided by criminals.

This is no new news, but what some are calling “shocking” is an anti-gun bill currently before the new Democrat-controlled congress. Introduced by New York anti-gun Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, H.R. 297 is being called the “most massive expansion of the Brady law since it passed in 1993,” according to a recent alert by Gun Owners of America (GOA).

Wisconsin Gun Owners, Inc.—Wisconsin’s only no-compromise gun lobby—has joined forces to provide state-level grassroots firepower to both GOA and The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) to oppose the bill. Dubbed the “NICS Improvement Act of 2007,” WGO says a better moniker is the “NICS Gun Registration Expansion Act of 2007.”
Among other evils, the legislation provides over $1 billion dollars in grants to states to compel them to provide a vast array of private records to NICS, which is administered by the FBI.

WGO CONDEMNS THE BILL
“Apparently the FBI isn’t convinced that law-abiding citizens submitting to an unconstitutional background check are law-abiding,” said Corey Graff, Executive Director of WGO. “The FBI should check their own crime data—it shows NICS has done nothing to stop criminals from buying guns. Imposing new restrictions on law-abiding citizens will only compel criminals to continue avoiding NICS as they buy guns illegally.”

The bill will also expand the Lautenberg misdemeanor gun ban, which disarms people who are convicted of minor offenses that include raising one’s voice to a family member in one’s own home.

“The gun grabbers are seeking to force the states to provide the federal government all of these indictment records, updated quarterly. Given the maxim among those in the legal profession that prosecutors can get a grand jury to “indict a ham sandwich,” this, too, is a gun prohibition that should be repealed, not expanded,” wrote Gun Owners of America in its recent alert.

“Mental health records are also covered under the McCarthy bill. This could have a significant impact on American servicemen, especially those returning from combat situations and who seek some type of psychiatric care. Often, veterans who have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder have been deemed as mentally “incompetent” and are prohibited from owning guns under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4). Records of those instances certainly exist, and, in 1999, the Department of Veterans Administration turned over 90,000 names of veterans to the FBI for inclusion into the NICS background check system,” continued the GOA alert.

First introduced in 2002, similar legislation has been stopped by grassroots gun owners up until now who view it rightly as an attack on the Second Amendment. But maintaining a solid defense just got harder, said WGO, due to anti-gunners taking control of congress and state legislatures.

ANTI-GUN BILL HAS STRANGE BED FELLOWS IN GUN COMMUNITY
Last session, according to GOA, 31 of the 32 sponsors of that bill were “F” rated and was one was “D” rated. This fact might leave gun owners wondering why a Fact Sheet on the National Rifle Association-Institute of Legislative Action’s website appears to support the bill.

“This bill, cosponsored by Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.), Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.) and others, would improve availability of criminal history and other records for conducting background checks on firearm buyers,” the NRA-ILA report said. “It also addresses concerns over past implementation actions by the FBI, prohibits the FBI from charging a “user fee” for background checks on gun buyers, and directs the General Accounting Office to audit and report to the Congress on past expenditures for NICS record improvements.”

NRA-ILA said that improving NICS would address concerns used to justify gun control due to “inadequacies” in the NICS system.

However, the NRA-ILA report does not say how expanding NICS would help gun owners get rid of it.

Even so, many in the gun community say this is nothing more than rationalization and they are taking aim at NRA-ILA’s support for the bill.

One group doing so is the Firearms Coalition in its Hard Corps Report: “At issue is a statement in survey question 6. that NRA does not oppose expanding “Instant Checks” to include private sales at gun shows. This was a fall-back position adopted by NRA back in 1999 when a very bad gun show bill was looking inevitable. We contend that NRA needs to revert back to a principled position on this issue, not start from a compromise, “fall-back” position,” the report said.

“...NRA is stating its unqualified endorsement of the laws as they exist. This is a problem.” The report continued.

NATIONAL GUN RIGHTS GROUPS UNITED AGAINST BILL
While NRA-ILA may be aligning itself with the most vehement anti-gun politicians in congress, they are the odd duck out.

“Calling NICS a background check is simply a deception: the Brady system is an elaborate scheme to register gun owners,” said Dudley Brown, Executive Director of the National Association for Gun Rights. “And it’s the foothold the gun-grabbers need to enact even further restrictions on our Second Amendment rights.”

“Asking permission for a right—which is what the Brady Registration Check does—turns it into a government-administered privilege. How any ‘gun rights group’ could support it, or its expansion, is beyond me,” Brown said.

Those sentiments were echoed by GOA. “The Brady law needs to be repealed, not expanded to allow anti-gun administrations to find new ways to strip citizens of their Second Amendment rights.”
For more information and to join Gun Owners of America, visit
www.gunowners.org.

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