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Brady Background Checks: Then and Now
It takes time to normalize gun control. Just ask Sarah Brady.
By Corey Graff, Executive Director
June 8, 2009
Prior to 1934, you could order a machine gun from the Sears Roebuck catalog.
Before 1994, you could buy a new firearm, and weren’t required to submit to a criminal background check. Today, a distant, computerized database system searches your background looking for flagged data it can use to prevent you from buying a gun.
Things have changed. And the trend is not for the better.
Back in ‘94, when the concept of a criminal background check system was pushed upon American gun owners by Jim and Sarah Brady, there seems to have been more outrage expressed by our side than there is today.
Gun owners have forgotten just how insidious the background check system really is. Requiring people to undergo a criminal background check to buy a gun — essentially to obtain government permission — turns a right into a privilege.
We forget this fact; perhaps we mutter something under our voice about the inconvenience of filling out ATF form 4473, but our uneasiness is short-lived. When we pass our criminal background check, and finally get our gun, we’re off to the range, and it’s business as usual. Of course, that’s a mistake.
That’s because this system is being expanded to reach into every nook and cranny of your existence and by the time you realize it’s grown so far out of control, it will be too late to stop it. By that time, you’ll be disarmed.
NICS Monster is Growing
Underscoring my point are two bills — AB70 and SB44 — being pushed by state republicans to expand the state-run version of the National Instant Check System (NICS) in Wisconsin. This expansion is being touted as an “improvement.”
The idea is to beef up the system with a bunch of health record data so that — allegedly — this ever-growing — yet never-satisfied — federal gun control monster can keep the mentally-disturbed from buying guns.
While that sounds reasonable, define “mentally disturbed.” No one can. Many federal politicians believe any American who owns a gun is mentally unstable.
The mental health field itself is pseudo-science, and is entirely subjective. Veterans, for example, are already being disarmed because of a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Once the victim of this made-up “science” is ‘adjudicated mentally defective,’ the automated background check system becomes judge, jury and executioner at the point-of-purchase. You’re not a criminal, but when you arrive at the gun store to pick up the gun you ordered, the system says, “Denied.”
Double Whammy As Republicans Expand, Democrats Exploit
Legislation by Milwaukee Democrat Spencer Coggs to ban private handgun sales not conducted through NICS, proves that anti-gun democrats are exploiting this gun control system to impose more restrictions on your firearm freedom. For example, if Coggs gets his way, if you sell a handgun to a friend or relative without going through an FFL dealer and a criminal check, you’ll be a felon.
Another example is Governor Jim Doyle’s proposal to increase the cost of these background checks — using the system to tax your gun rights out of reach.
So while state republicans are working through the night to make the Brady background check system more inclusive and expansive in its reach, state democrats are toiling all day to roll every aspect of your right to own, buy or sell guns into the very same system. The candle is burning from both ends.
Gun owners: Where’s the outrage? NICS was unconstitutional in 1994 and it’s unconstitutional today. It took time for Sarah Brady to normalize her nationwide gun control scheme. How long will it take us to repeal it?
Editor’s Note: E-mail me at with your thoughts on this issue.
If you're tired of the broken system of compromise and access — a system which has netted gun owners only more gun control — we urge you to Join Wisconsin Gun Owners, Inc. today!
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