The Giant NICS Improvement Act Thread Myth v. Reality

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An Open Letter To The Pro-gun Community

Gun Owners of America
8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102
Springfield, VA 22151
(703)321-8585
Thursday, October 4, 2007

It may be a cliche, but it is true: This letter is written not in anger, but in sorrow and concern. It is written to our friends about NRA staff who, tragically, have taken a course which, we believe, would be disastrous for the Second Amendment and the pro-gun movement.

Two of us are Life Members of the NRA -- one of whom was an NRA board member for over ten years. And our legislative counsel was a paid consultant for the NRA.

So we certainly have no animus against the NRA staff, much less our wonderful friends who are NRA members.

In fact, over the last thirty years, GOA and its staff have worked with NRA to facilitate most of our pro-gun victories -- from McClure-Volkmer to the death of post-Columbine gun control to a gun liability bill free of anti-gun "killer amendments."

But those who staff the NRA, without consulting the membership, have now made a series of strange and dangerous alliances with the likes of Chuck Schumer, Carolyn McCarthy, and Pat Leahy. And we believe that, if allowed to continue, this will produce anti-gun policies which the NRA staff will bitterly regret.

Christ said, in the Sermon on the Mount, that "by their fruits, ye shall know them." And, frankly, these fruits are not likely to produce much pro-gun legislation.

Substantively, the Leahy/McCarthy/Schumer bill, which NRA's staff has vigorously supported without consulting with its membership, would rubber-stamp the illegal and non-statutory BATFE regulations which have already been used to strip gun rights from 110,000 veterans. It would also allow an anti-gun administration to turn over Americans' most private medical records to the federal instant check system without a court order.

But perhaps even worse, the bill was hatched in secret, without hearings or testimony, and passed out of the House without even a roll call. And now, the sponsors are trying to do the same thing in the Senate -- in an effort to ram the bill through without votes or floor debate, led by anti-gun Senator Chuck Schumer. If it is good legislation, as its proponents claim, why such fears of a roll call vote or debate in committee?

Indeed, in the face of horrific dissent from the NRA's own membership, its staff has tragically ignored arguments and dug in its heels -- in an almost "because-we-say-so" attitude.

Understand this:

* Passage of McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer will not quell the calls for gun control. To the contrary, it will embolden our enemies to push for the abolition of even more of our Second Amendment rights. Already, the Brady Campaign has indicated its intent to follow up this "victory" with a push for an effective ban on gun shows.

* Passage of McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer will not be viewed as an "NRA victory." To the contrary, once the liberal media has used the NRA staff for its purposes, it will throw them away like a used Kleenex. Already, an over-confident press is crowing that this is the "first major gun control measure in over a decade."

* Taking the BATFE's horrifically expansive unlawful regulations dealing with veterans' loss of gun rights and making them unchangeable congressionally-endorsed statutory law is NOT "maintaining the status quo."

* We are told that the McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer bill should be passed because it contains special provisions to allow persons prohibited from owning guns to get their rights restored. But there is already such a provision in the law; it is 18 U.S.C. 925(c). And the reason why no one has been able to get their rights restored under CURRENT LAW is that funds for the system have been blocked by Chuck Schumer. It is no favor to gun owners for Chuck Schumer -- the man who has blocked funding for McClure-Volkmer's "relief from disability" provisions for 15 years -- to now offer to give us back a tepid version of the provisions of current law which he has tried so hard to destroy.

Finally, there is the cost, which ranges from $1 billion in the cheapest draft to $5 billion -- to one bill which places no limits whatsoever on spending. Thus, we would be drastically increasing funding for gun control -- at a time when BATFE, which has done so much damage to the Second Amendment, should be punished, rather than rewarded.

We would now respectfully ask the NRA staff to step back from a battle with its membership -- and to join with us in opposing McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer gun control, rather than supporting it.

And, to our friends and NRA members, we would ask that you take this letter and pass it onto your friends and colleagues.

Sincerely,


Senator H.L. "Bill" Richardson (ret.)
Founder and Chairman

Larry Pratt
Executive Director

Michael E. Hammond
Legislative Counsel
 
Read the actual bill. It does nothing of what the GOA say it does. That organization has become quite the group of kooks.
 
One thing i've heard about this bill is that it'll call for dumping medical records into NICS?
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MYTH: A child who has been diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder "can be banned for life from ever owning a gun as an adult." "Your ailing grandfather could have his entire gun collection seized, based only on a diagnosis of Alzheimer's (and there goes the family inheritance)."

FACT: Again, a psychiatric or medical diagnosis alone is not an "adjudication" or "commitment."

Critics base their concern on BATFE regulations that define an "adjudication" to include a decision by a "court, board, commission, or other lawful authority." They claim any doctor could potentially be a "lawful authority."

They are wrong. Not even the Clinton Administration took such an extreme position. In fact, the term "lawful authority" was apparently intended to cover various types of government panels that are similar to "courts, boards, or commissions." Basic principles of legal interpretation require reading it that way. The term also doesn't override the basic constitutional protections that come into play in decisions about a person's mental health.

Finally, records of voluntary treatment also would not be available under federal and state health privacy laws, which H.R. 2640 also does not override.
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Or read the bill yourself. I did. It simply doesn't say anything like that.
 
The letter from the GOA seems pretty spot on to me. I'm not going to bash the NRA but I have a feeling they are making a big mistake here. No I have not read the bill. I don't need to read it. All I need to read are the names of those responsible for writing it. McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer.

McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer. These are the names of some of the most venomous anti-gun, anti-freedom, anti-American degenerates in the federal government. What surprises me is the thinking that McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer have suddenly written proposed legislation that is going to be helpful to gun owners and the RKBA. You've got to be kidding me! McCarthy and her ilk have but one goal when it comes to guns and that’s completely disarming the American people. So why would they push so hard for this "helpful pro-gun legislation"? The answer is it's an expansion and creation of a huge database of private information about gun owners that ultimately will be used against us.
 
If the regulations are illegal (as well as unlawful and non-statutory according to GOA), then it should be an easy enough matter to challenge them in court. These regulations were put into place almost a decade ago and nobody seems to have done that. Why is that?
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Let’s see, NFA, GCA, FOPA machine gun ban, Federal assault weapons ban, NICS, DC gun bans, California gun bans, bans of all sorts. Very little if any of this crap has ever been challenged in court, why? Because it's NOT easy, its never been and never will be easy to challenge any law in court. It takes willing, committed and capable lawyers, stacks and stacks of cash and often several years time to make a court challenge. Very very few laws ever get overturned in court no matter what the nature of the law. Most laws will stand unchallenged. This is a fact that power hungry politicians have known for years.

As others have already noted, 18 U.S.C. 925(c) is a federal provision and has been stripped of funds by Congress for many years now. However, the new provision moves the process for relief from disability to the state level where it cannot be so easily defunded by Congress. So the comparison isn't a direct analog.
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Now this one is almost funny. We have a provision to get gun rights back but the problem is it's been defunded. Who do you think is responsible for "defunding" the system? In other words we have a mechanism that is supposed to allow citizens to get their gun rights back but the government doesn’t abide by it. At the same time we are to believe that they won't find a way to nullify the new system. Right! Not a day goes by that the federal gov. isn’t engaged in tax dollar extortion to force states to comply with their ill intentioned wishes.



It has been said that this bill was a great compromise and a win for the NRA and gun owners. Our win is we get a properly functioning and accurate NICS system, fine. Can Somebody explain to me what McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer got out of this? They wrote the bill, they hate guns, they hate armed Americans, surely they are getting something they want! They are chomping at the bit to get this law passed. What ever could it be?
 
If the NICS Improvement Bill is so simply stated defining who will be prohibited from owning guns, why does the U.S. Senate think it necessary to add 50 pages of amendments to the original Bill?:banghead:

What the NRA went along with in the original Bill only wanted reporting of the ajutacated mental defective. I haven't heard any complaint from them about the Senate's 50 pages!
 
I havent read the bill in full (ie, the 50 pages you are talking about), but do the amendments have anything at all to do with guns, are are they pet projects and pork that congressmen have just added onto the bill?
 
I have read the bill and support it.

I think this is actually a fairly pro-gun bill. It does a couple of things that are good. First, it makes NICS more accurate. Second, if you are found to be ineligible to own a gun because of mental problems, there is a way to arbitrate and get off the list.

When was the last time any law let someone actually get off a government list?
 
The letter from the GOA seems pretty spot on to me. I'm not going to bash the NRA but I have a feeling they are making a big mistake here. No I have not read the bill. I don't need to read it. All I need to read are the names of those responsible for writing it. McCarthy/Leahy/Schumer.
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That's the worst kind of sloppy thinking there is. If you haven't read the bill, how can you provide an authoritative, or even merely informed, opinion on it?
 
Let’s see, NFA, GCA, FOPA machine gun ban, Federal assault weapons ban, NICS, DC gun bans, California gun bans, bans of all sorts. Very little if any of this crap has ever been challenged in court, why?
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Not true for any of the examples you listed - every single one of those laws have been challenged in court - NFA, GCA, 922(o), the AWB, NICS, the DC gun ban and the California gun ban. So why isn't GOA supporting one of these veterans to sue and get their rights back if the law is clearly illegal?

Not all of these challenges were effective of course, which is why it has often been necessary to resort to legislation to fix the problem. Here though is seems that GOA acknowledges that there have been no successful court challenges to fix the problem faced by these veterans; but then encourages us not to support a chance for them to be removed from disability because the bill also gives money to the states to add people to NICS who have been determined in a court to be a danger to themselves or others.

We have a provision to get gun rights back but the problem is it's been defunded. Who do you think is responsible for "defunding" the system? In other words we have a mechanism that is supposed to allow citizens to get their gun rights back but the government doesn’t abide by it. At the same time we are to believe that they won't find a way to nullify the new system. Right!
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Congress doesn't control the program for relief from disability under this bill. The states do. If there is going to be any challenge to that provision, it will have to come from the states. And even assuming your worst case scenario comes true - we are exactly where we are today - people who have been determined to be a danger to themselves or others by a court or review board are prohibited from owning a firearm and there is no chance to get off the list once you are on it.

Edited to add: O... and since Section 105 of the bill says that states MUST participate in a relief from disability funding in order to receive grants, if states did stop participating for some reason, they would lose the money to add the names (which is basically the only change this bill makes to current law).
 
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If Carolyn McCarthy supports it, it's bad for America and freedom, that's all you need to know.
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Precisionshootist - with all do respect this is exactly the attitude of the antigunners. They don't need to no anything other than guns are bad. I can understand if you don't like the bill, but I'd suggest that we ask people to understand it before we begin protesting. It's dangerous to do otherwise.

Shoot safe - I do

Lovesbeer99
 
"I've never seen anything about NICS in the Second Amendment. Am I missing something?"

So we should all yell and scream about it while the dems make their so called 'needed changes' without any input from our side?
GOA has about ZERO credibility on the hill.
They have not managed to accomplish anything.

Holding your breath in protest till you turn blue is not going to achieve anything, and that is what GOA has been doing for the most part.
 
I don't care how anyone spins this. It does nothing to restore freedom or protect it. It further entrenches the NICS. It does nothing to force government to properly handle/detain violent criminals. It is a step in the wrong direction. It supports a system that should be and may some time soon be found unconstitutional. It is a waste of the money I give to the NRA. The money I give to the NRA is for freedom, not to support government measures that intrude upon my or anyone else's freedom.

I'll post my letter to the NRA tonight.

Woody
 
the real world

Hey, I'm in favor of rescinding any and all restrictions on gun ownership, too.

Does anybody out there think that that's likely or even possible?

Anybody think even a national referendum would support that?

If not, maybe we'd better try to work with the system and the current political climate as it is now, rather than as we WISH it were.

If so--well, did you know that if you put a little wool hat on a snowball, it'll last a really long time in Hell?
 
Once again, the NRA has shown how weak and ineffectual it has become. Let's join with our enemies under the guise of being "reasonable". Having any connection at all with those "legislators" will only serve to weaken the already tenuous connection between the "modern" interpretation of the Second Amendment and what the founding fathers intended.

I am so glad that I stopped giving money to them years ago. Everyone always talks about all the good work NRA has done, but you know, one "OH SH*T" wipes out ten "ATTABOYS". We cannot give in on even one aspect of protecting our rights, because soon, we may not have any.
 
Bottom Line: The NRA's "Winning Team" is leading the NRA in the wrong direction. This has been obvious since Neal Knox had to sue them to follow the Bylaws years ago.

Anytime NRA sides with the likes of Schumer, McCarthy and their ilk is time the NRA leadership needs changed.
 
What the bill actually says, and what the lawyers down the road will decide the bill says are rarely the same thing, so reading the bill yourself is the end all.
The NRA's defense is nonsensical, and reminds me a lot of George Bush's defense of the amnesty bill he wanted to push through.

FACT: Again, a psychiatric or medical diagnosis alone is not an "adjudication" or "commitment."

Critics base their concern on BATFE regulations that define an "adjudication" to include a decision by a "court, board, commission, or other lawful authority." They claim any doctor could potentially be a "lawful authority."

They are wrong. Not even the Clinton Administration took such an extreme position. In fact, the term "lawful authority" was apparently intended to cover various types of government panels that are similar to "courts, boards, or commissions." Basic principles of legal interpretation require reading it that way. The term also doesn't override the basic constitutional protections that come into play in decisions about a person's mental health.
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If anyone thinks that that is comforting, they should not be allowed to vote in the future. This line in particular is laughable:
Basic principles of legal interpretation require reading it that way. The term also doesn't override the basic constitutional protections that come into play in decisions about a person's mental health.
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Gee, and I thought that, "..shall not be infringed," was pretty damn clear. I was wrong about that and I think the NRA is wrong about this.
I hope that as this plays itself out, I am, in fact, wrong. But this is a dance I have seen before, and doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome is one of the definitions of insane and I don't want to surrender my rights.
 
This is only one bill being looked at and called "Veterans Disarmament Act". Please look at HR 4757, "Our Lady Of Peace Act" which has already passed the house. Look closely at the following clause:

"(3) APPLICATION TO PERSONS WHO HAVE BEEN ADJUDICATED AS A MENTAL DEFECTIVE OR COMMITTED TO A MENTAL INSTITUTION-

(A) For purposes of paragraph (1), an adjudication as a mental defective occurs when a court, board, commission, or other government entity determines that a person, as a result of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease--

(i) is a danger to himself or to others; or

(ii) lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs."

Please note the various ways a person can be called mentally "defective". I'm not an alarmist, however, there are bills being looked at that need to be watched very closely. More info at the following:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-2640
 
Dr. Dickie said:
Gee, and I thought that, "..shall not be infringed," was pretty damn clear. I was wrong about that and I think the NRA is wrong about this.
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How about providing some law or past examples in support of your argument then? Can you show how the definition of "adjudicated mentally ill" has changed over the years? Can you show where it has changed at all?

The argument that we can't pass any legislation because someone might interpret it differently no matter how obviously we spell it out is a fallacious argument. It is nothing more than an argument that we should always do nothing because if we try to do anything, people might twist the words. Using the same logic, there is no point in trying to pass new legislation protecting gun rights because it will just be twisted against us later.

Skirmisher said:
If the NICS Improvement Bill is so simply stated defining who will be prohibited from owning guns, why does the U.S. Senate think it necessary to add 50 pages of amendments to the original Bill
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What is your source for this claim? The bill hasn't left the Senate Judiciary Committee yet and amendments in the Senate are added via a floor vote. Since it hasn't reached the floor of the Senate, no amendments have been added (though they may have been proposed).
 
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