Trump ‘Supportive of Efforts to Improve’ Gun Federal Background Check
Sen. Cornyn introduced a bill last November to fix federal gun background checks.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders has announced that President Donald Trump expressed an interest to improve gun federal background checks.
From Fox News:
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Trump spoke on Friday to Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn about a bill the Texas Republican had introduced alongside Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., which would “improve federal compliance with criminal background check legislation.”
Sanders continued, “While discussions are ongoing and revisions are being considered, the president is supportive of efforts to improve the federal background check system.”
Cornyn introduced his bill last November after a shooting at a Texas church. From USA Today:
The bill penalizes federal agencies that fail to properly report relevant records and provides incentives to states to improve their overall reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The bill also directs more federal funding to the accurate reporting of domestic violence records.
“For years agencies and states haven’t complied with the law, failing to upload these critical records without consequence,” Cornyn said. “Just one record that’s not properly reported can lead to tragedy, as the country saw last week in Sutherland Springs, Texas. This bill aims to help fix what’s become a nationwide, systemic problem so we can better prevent criminals and domestic abusers from obtaining firearms.”
It turns out, in that case, the Air Force never submitted a criminal conviction on shooter Devin Kelley, which would have banned him from purchasing a gun.
When you purchase a gun, you fill out a form and the person selling the gun will run it through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NCIS) that the FBI maintains. The FBI listed out those who cannot receive a firearm:
- A person who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year or any state offense classified by the state as a misdemeanor and is punishable by a term of imprisonment of more than two years.
- Persons who are fugitives of justice—for example, the subject of an active felony or misdemeanor warrant.
- An unlawful user and/or an addict of any controlled substance; for example, a person convicted for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year; or a person with multiple arrests for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past five years with the most recent arrest occurring within the past year; or a person found through a drug test to use a controlled substance unlawfully, provided the test was administered within the past year.
- A person adjudicated mental defective or involuntarily committed to a mental institution or incompetent to handle own affairs, including dispositions to criminal charges of found not guilty by reason of insanity or found incompetent to stand trial.
- A person who, being an alien, is illegally or unlawfully in the United States.
- A person who, being an alien except as provided in subsection (y) (2), has been admitted to the United States under a non-immigrant visa.
- A person dishonorably discharged from the United States Armed Forces.
- A person who has renounced his/her United States citizenship.
- The subject of a protective order issued after a hearing in which the respondent had notice that restrains them from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such partner. This does not include ex parte orders.
- A person convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime which includes the use or attempted use of physical force or threatened use of a deadly weapon and the defendant was the spouse, former spouse, parent, guardian of the victim, by a person with whom the victim shares a child in common, by a person who is cohabiting with or has cohabited in the past with the victim as a spouse, parent, guardian or similar situation to a spouse, parent or guardian of the victim.
- A person who is under indictment or information for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.
This all comes a few days after 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people at a high school in Parkland, FL. Trump visited the injured over the weekend and will host students and teachers at the White House on Wednesday.
Since the massacre, everyone has been blaming the NRA and demanding gun control even though the FBI admitted last Friday that the department received a credible warning about Cruz in January and did not follow up on it. The FBI also received a tip from a YouTube vlogger about a comment left by a Nikolas Cruz that said, “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”
Thing is, though, the community and school even knew Cruz was a threat, so much so that the school banned him from campus while wearing a backpack.
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Comments
When you purchase a gun, you fill out a form and the person selling the gun will run it through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NCIS) that the FBI maintains.
No, only when you take possession of the firearm from sellers with certain Federal Firearms Licenses. There are nine distinct FFLs; not all FFL holders have access to the NICS.
Most FFLs and the general public have no access to the NICS, and cannot use it even if they think it would be a good idea to do so.
There are actually 11 different FFL types. Only 4 allows the holder to sell firearms and all of those require NCIS checks.
FFL Numbers run 01 through 11. But two of those numbers don’t have corresponding licenses.
Only 4 allows the holder to sell firearms and all of those require NCIS checks.
And this is simply incorrect. You don’t need a license to sell firearms. You need a license to deal in firearms.
You generally need a license to ship firearms in interstate commerce, and NICS has nothing to do with shipment.
There are no official numbers, but the general belief is that about half of all guns sold legally in America are not sold by licensed dealers. Therefore, no NICS is required, or possible. How many are sold illegally, well, I’ve never heard anyone even speculate.
Seriously? Among whom is this “generally believed”, and why? It seems so far from reality, and yet the sad truth is a lot of people believe all sorts of ridiculous things. If so many people believe there are people around them carrying concealed rifles and shotguns, there’s no limit to what else they’ll believe.
I linked to a study conducted in 2015 and published in The Annals of Internal Medicine yesterday (scroll down), as Tom Swift simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. 22% of people who acquired a firearm in the past two years did so without a background check. But that includes gifts and inheritance. I had guessed that if you just considered firearms purchases the figure would be around 14%. I was wrong. From the study:
“Among gun owners who acquired their most recent firearm within the past 2 years by way of purchase, 13% (CI, 8% to 18%) did so without a background check.”
Oh, and by the way:
Primary Funding Source: Fund for a Safer Future and the Joyce Foundation.
If you poke around their sites you’ll see they’re both gun control advocacy groups, as are the type of medicos who conduct these studies as if they’re looking at a medical epidemic. And they couldn’t even get close to the numbers swift is throwing around. That thoroughly and long debunked figure is generally thrown around by gun control groups such as the Brady Campaign. Despite being debunked, gun grabbers still use the figure, and I can only conclude that’s where swift is getting the number.
Curio and Relic (03) FFLs can sell across state lines, but do not have access to NCIS, nor can their licenses be verified online like a conventional(01) dealer.
What a dog gone minute there! So you are telling me that if all the things already put in place worked to start with then we could very well have avoided this massacre???
Let’s see, school officials dropped the ball, local police dropped the ball, sheriff’s office dropped the ball, FBI dropped the ball, but we need to improve the background check system on people that are playing by the rules.
Is that what I’m seeing?
I keep reading how they “dropped the ball”.
16 children dead is not “dropping the ball” – there should be indictments of all those who failed to follow the regulations and laws for reporting and investigating this type of thing.
To start with, they should all be fired and lose their pensions -and made to speak face to face with the families to explain why not.
More generally, and over a longer period of time, the GOP has proposed several bills to improve the background check system, and they’ve been killed by the Collectivists.
They have? This is the first I’ve heard of it. Would you point me towards some other examples?
Not doubting you, I just have no idea how to even begin to search this out.
https://www.factcheck.org/2013/04/biden-revises-nra-history-on-background-checks/
That at least gives you a time-line, but you have to cut through a lot of bullshit to get to reality. What it DOES show is that several attempts have been made to craft a better system, and they’ve failed largely because the Collectivists wanted MORE, and couln’t get it.
I suppose that the FBI’s gross negligence in this and in other high-profile cases, dating all the way back to before the 9/11 attacks, will continue to go unaddressed.
The problems that can’t be legislated away are the ones that nobody wants to deal with. Institutional incompetence defies easy fixes. The Dumb-o-crats, of course, are happy to bang the “gun control” drum and engage in their typically infantile histrionics with regard to the Second Amendment. I haven’t heard one prominent Dumb-o-crat take the FBI to task over its indefensible failures in this case, which are part of a stark pattern of ineptitude vis-a-vis mass shootings and/or terrorist incidents.
What will the eventual investigative report reveal? Probably a culture of total indifference, that doesn’t treat phone call tips about potential mass murder with any kind of urgency or seriousness.
There are a large number of false positives. That could be improved.
A government background check to purchase any personal weapon is UNCONSTITUTIONAL. It is a violation of the 2nd And 14th Amendments. There ARE NO EXCEPTION embodied in the 2nd Amendment to allow for this. Zero, zip, none, nada.
When did we become a nation of wimps? It is common knowledge that criminals, who can’t pass a background check, still manage to obtain firearms. If they can’t afford to purchase one, they make their own. Anyone remember zip guns? People have to be responsible for their own personal protection. And, the easiest way to do that is to procure a firearm and training in how to use it effectively. Even if we out outlawed all firearms, this will not eliminate personal threats. A sword, knife, spear, club, hammer, large rock, martial arts training or even a group could be used to attack a person and do substantial harm. I suppose that we could make all of those things illegal, or require a background check to obtain one.
Point defense is always necessary. And, you never depend upon another for defense of YOUR person.
Not true. A person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property, after due process of law.
We are talking USA here not 1930’s Germany or Russia.
If you are convicted of a felony and then released after serving your prison sentence, are you denied the protections of the 4th and 5th Amendment? How about the 1st Amendment? The answer is NO. So, why is it constitutional to deny a person the protections afforded under the 2nd Amendment?
Nowhere in the 2nd Amendment is there any provision to allow a government to regulate firearms and other weapons with regard to convicted felons who are not incarcerated. And, as the 14th Amendment applies the 2nd to the states, they are also constitutionally barred from doing the same.
During the 1800’s once one completed prison time all rights were restored. In those days the hardened criminals were not hugged and “rehabilitated” as today.
True story… In instructions to the jury prior to the start of a trial the Texas judge stated that it was the duty of the jury to determine whether that SOB defendant deserved to be found guilty or not.
There are provisions in Federal law to restore a felon’s Second Amendment rights, but Congress has always refused to fund the desk to do so.
But we are not federalized professionals who know more than we do and can take responsibility for their actions without accountability. Since we are accountable for our actions, we cannot qualify to take care of ourseves.
Gun control means people I don’t like cannot own one.
Take the same list of actions/people and apply it to the first amendment or any other amendment.
Or to voting rights. See who is bending over backwards to restore voting rights to felons, or allowing non-citizens to vote, but throw a hissy fit when you mention restoration of Second Amendment rights.
“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.” – William S. Burroughs
Tom Swift is a fountain of bad information.
“There are no official numbers, but the general belief is that about half of all guns sold legally in America are not sold by licensed dealers. Therefore, no NICS is required, or possible.”
http://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2595892/firearm-acquisition-without-background-checks-results-national-survey
“Setting:
United States, 2015.
Participants: 1613 adult gun owners.
Measurements: Current gun owners were asked where and when they acquired their last firearm; if they purchased the firearm; and whether, as part of that acquisition, they had a background check (or were asked to show a firearm license or permit) For firearms purchased privately within the previous 2 years (that is, other than from a store or pawnshop, including sales between individuals in person, online, or at gun shows), 50% (CI, 35% to 65%) were obtained without a background check. This percentage was 26% (CI, 5% to 47%) for owners residing in states regulating private firearm sales and 57% (CI, 40% to 75%) for those living in states without regulations on private firearm sales…”
Results: 22% (95% CI, 16% to 27%) of gun owners who reported obtaining their most recent firearm within the previous 2 years reported doing so without a background check…”
The 22% number is “obtained” or “acquired” by any means, which would include gifts and inherited guns. That’s why they had to had to ask a separate question about whether or not they purchased the gun. If you look at only guns purchased privately, the number may be as low as 14%, and of those about half are sold nationwide without a background check.
Not even the gun grabbing medicos can get anywhere close to that bogus figure that Swift is throwing around, “the general belief is that about half of all guns sold legally in America are not sold by licensed dealers. Therefore, no NICS is required, or possible…”
He simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. But then gun grabber groups like the Brady bunch or Everytown USA (Bloomberg’s group) throw around that long discredited figure that half of all guns sold legally in the US are sold without a background check, so no doubt that’s where Swift is getting his talking points.
I personally would be fine with raising the age to purchase or possess an assault rifle to 21. But I also think voting age should be 21 as well. Temporary gun violence restraining orders if done properly may also have merit.
The most successful massacres have one thing in common: A bad guy carries a gun into a gun free zone where no good guys have a gun (or other place no one else is packing and kills everybody in sight.
Balance that equation and the problem is solved.