New gun control legislation; old propaganda in a new wrapper

| November 21, 2017

The Atlantic reports that there’s new gun control legislation, known as the Fix NICS Act, coming down the pike to tighten background checks by making law enforcement agencies report to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, (NICS) the names of people who shouldn’t have guns. Let me say up front that I fully support this effort, as does the NRA;

“We applaud Senator John Cornyn’s efforts to ensure that the records of prohibited individuals are entered into NICS,” Chris Cox of the NRA said in a statement. “The National Rifle Association has long supported the inclusion of all legitimate records in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms industry, put out a statement on Thursday in which it “praised U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) for his leadership” on the bill.

Gun-control advocates support the bill too, and say it’s evidence that common ground between Republicans and Democrats in the gun debate is possible. “This is both parties affirming that there are people that we believe should not have access to guns, and we want to make sure that the system is set up in such a way that we prevent access to guns for those people,” Christian Heyne, the legislative director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, which supports the legislation, said in an interview. “This is a real, genuine effort from people who couldn’t be further from each other on the other side of the aisle.”

The problem with the legislation is enforcement. President Obama signed an Executive Order that was supposed to do the same thing. It made for good press, but it really didn’t change anything – after the Executive Order was signed, everyone put their feet up, lit a cigar and congratulated each other for “doing something, anything” and the EO was promptly forgotten.

Before that EO, was the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 during the Bush Administration which “Amends the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to: (1) authorize the Attorney General to obtain electronic versions of information from federal agencies on persons disqualified from receiving firearms; (2) require federal agencies to provide such information to the Attorney General, not less frequently than quarterly; and (3) require federal agencies to update, correct, modify, or remove obsolete records and notify the Attorney General of such actions to keep the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) up to date. Requires the Attorney General to submit annual reports to Congress on the compliance of federal agencies with such reporting requirements.” It actually rewarded states and federal agencies for doing what they should have been doing all along, but obviously, that didn’t work.

So the new bill only regurgitates old legislation that was never enforced. I want to know how the new legislation will do anything better than the old legislation.

Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists

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A Proud Infidel®™

More Gummint. Yeah, that’ll fix everything, won’t it?

desert

Oh ? You support this? and just WHO is going to decide who should NOT have guns? The last time the NRA got in this pile of crap, they were against veterans that had gone to a mental health appointment? MORE BULLSHYT!

Graybeard

IMNSHO, all they want to do is look like they are Doing Something To Make a Difference.

What they need to do is enforce the laws that punish those who do not enforce the laws. Make the DAs, judges, and petty and not-so-petty bureaucrats personally liable for any damages resulting in their failure to enforce the law, and criminally liable as well.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Jus Bill

What a radical, sensible idea. It’ll never fly.

desert

Sensible? wtf is sensible about it? When someone gets a hard on for you and turns you in, who will decide you shouldn’t have guns?

Duane

You’ve just got to stop it with the common sense ideas that are reasonable. It’s easier to write up 100 new laws rather than to go and enforce and put teeth into the requirement to adhere to 10 of the old ones (that they ignore on a daily basis)

Ex-PH2

But…but…but they DID something… didn’t they?

Or is this another case of Dindo Nuffin?

David

I hear they had to strike the word “Republicans” from the list of disqualified…
Seriously, it should be a required part of any legislation to do a check to ensure it is not duplicative instad of creating a new law restating what is already on the books.

SFC D

Someone should write a new law for that…

Atkron

Just makes me wonder how many duplicate laws there are out there.

It would be nice if we couldn’t just streamline all these laws down to, oh I don’t know…

-Don’t Kill
-Don’t Steal
-Don’t Hurt

26Limabeans

-Pay your taxes

19D3OR4 - Smitty

That would violate the “Don’t Steal” law

26Limabeans

Just bought a gun on the internet. NOT!
I won an auction, mailed payment, had a dealer fax an FFL and now I get to wait for two weeks
until the dealer gets it from the seller and then pay for an instant background check.
Then, I wait for the magic word “proceed”.
I might even be truthful with the questions.

Dave Hardin

The NRA caved in on the recent Bump Stock debacle, they believe in “compromise”…gutless pussy code for not defending the 2nd Amendment.

Anything that might infringe on my right, along with my neighbors, to defend ourselves from government tyranny will never be accepted.

Fuck the NRA on this issue. Big bad bump stocks are evil…so is the abuse of power being carried out by Federal, State and Local governments every day.

The NRA does nice commercials but are all show and no go these days.

Its just like expecting the VFW to defend Stolen Valor…gutless fucking clowns everywhere these days.

Graybeard

They will be glad to take your donation to the legal department to defend our gun rights, however. /s

I tend to be leery of all forms of alarmism, even when some of the alarm is valid.

Jay Dee

What we are seeing is the same cycle of failure that wrecked education and healthcare. A government agency fails at their dedicated task. The only solution is do to do more of the same. Congress votes in more laws and more spending. Lather, rinse, repeat.

We are promised gun control. What we are getting is hordes of dysfunctional bureaucracies.

David

Be happy the gun-controllers are incompetent. Otherwise they might accomplish something. See Brady 1993.

Wilted Willy

Think of the children! Ohhh we must get rid of all the scary black guns!! Another waste of time and taxpayer money. How many more laws will they pass that do the same thing and are never enforced. Much like our illegal alien laws??

luddite4change

“require federal agencies to provide such information to the Attorney General, not less frequently than quarterly;”

Does DOD qualify as a federal agency, who were required to report?

Where is the teeth? Who at DOD signed the reports to DOJ that X number of former service members were added to the NICS data base on a quarterly and yearly basis?

Brown Neck Gaitor

Zero point zero chance of this actually working.

I read somewhere that DOD didn’t convict the guy of domestic violence. It was “just” a regular old assault conviction that happened to be on his wife and kid. That is the way they can weasel out with only 1 person on the NCIS list.

The ACLU will file an injunction to keep the local jurisdictions from filing mental case info since it will violate HIPAA AND it will make it harder for people that really need the help from getting blah blah blah.

Hondo

Actually, he should have been reported by DoD to NICS as a felon vice for domestic violence.

He was convicted via GCM of an assault specification that could have gotten him 2 yrs. Under Federal law, that’s a felony – regardless of the type of discharge given or the actual sentence received. The max possible sentence, not the sentence received, is what determines felony/misdemeanor.

Only misdemeanor domestic violence convictions are reportable as domestic violence convictions. Felony convictions are – or should be, anyway – reported as felony convictions.

I still have a hard time believing that DoD has reported all its domestic violence misdemeanor convictions (the same is true for many states), and someone in DoD certainly appears to have “fornicated Fido” re: the San Antonio shooter. My guess is that someone saw no DD and assumed he was convicted of simple assault vice one of the more serious variants that qualify as felonies. Either that, or they just didn’t bother to report as required.

But using him as the poster child for DoD failing to properly report domestic violence convictions isn’t exactly legit. He should have been reported as a felon, not due to having been convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.

Thunderstixx

Same shit different wrapper…
This one has the smell of last Tuesday’s fish…
They are still trying to make lazy bureaucrats do their fucking jobs and report domestic violence to the NICS so morons like the Sutherland Springs shooter won’t be able to get a fucking firearm.
That fuck should have been in prison for a minimum of 30 years having his ass reamed by Bubba, Thor, Mr tiny and the rest of the clientele on Cell Block C…
Stupid politicians…

Hondo

Same shit different wrapper…

Actually, it’s not. It points out a potentially worse problem.

From looking at the FBI stats ( https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active-records-in-the-nics-indices-by-state.pdf/view ), it appears that DoD is largely only reporting DDs to NICS. That’s a problem.

Just like many felonies don’t result in long prison sentences, not all GCM convictions that qualify as felonies result in a DD. But based on FBI stats, DoD only seems to be reporting DDs. Reports by DoD of other disqualifying and reportable events (involuntary committments, misdemeanor domestic violence convictions, felony conviction) seem virtually nonexistent.

I’m guessing DoD is failing to report a whole lot more disqualifying convictions than domestic violence misdemeanors.

UpNorth

He also should have been reported to NICS when he was confined to a mental health facility, and his subsequent escape from that facility. But, again, a clerk somewhere took the files from his to do basket, looked them over, and decided to get to them after morning coffee, and threw them back in the file. Except he threw them in the done basket. Then he moved on to lunch.

NHSparky

Harumph! Harumph! Harumph!

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

A Proud Infidel®™

WTBF about effectively enforcing the laws we already have? OH WAIT, NEVER MIND, that actually makes sense and we’re talking about Government!

“Government is always the last refuge of the nincompoop.” – Unknown

AKanonymoose

MOAR laws… ban all the things… malum prohibitum….Why haven’t they banned the shoulder thingys that flip up? Think of the children.

On a serious note I purchased a title 1 m203 receiver last week that will soon be a registered DD. 😜