Buying a gun? Fail your background check (NICS) and you’re a criminal

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NICS criminal background check buy gun

Buying a gun? Fail your background check (NICS) and you’re a criminal

The NICS Denial Notification Act of 2021 is gaining traction in the U.S. Senate, and if it becomes law, every individual who fails their background check when attempting to buy a gun will be placed under criminal investigation, even though the system is notorious for producing bogus results.

The NICS Denial Notification Act of 2021 (S. 675) would open criminal investigations on 100% of background check denials affecting tens of thousands of innocent law-abiding American attempting to buy a gun, and whose only crime is being denied a gun purchase based on the results of a broken background check system.

Though the bill was introduced by a Democrat (Chris Coons), it enjoys the support of both Republicans and Democrats. Here is a full list of the Senators who openly support opening criminal investigations into innocent Americans over false-positive NICS denials (via Gun Owners of America):

  • Sen. Coons, Christopher A. (D-DE)
  • Sen. Cornyn, John (R-TX)
  • Sen. Duckworth, Tammy (D-IL)
  • Sen. Rubio, Marco (R-FL)
  • Sen. Carper, Thomas R. (D-DE)
  • Sen. Lankford, James (R-OK)
  • Sen. Klobuchar, Amy (D-MN)
  • Sen. Collins, Susan M. (R-ME)
  • Sen. Manchin, Joe, III (D-WV)
  • Sen. Toomey, Patrick (R-PA)
  • Sen. Graham, Lindsey (R-SC)
  • Sen. Shaheen, Jeanne (D-NH)
  • Sen. Grassley, Chuck (R-IA)
  • Sen. Leahy, Patrick J. (D-VT)
  • Sen. Blumenthal, Richard (D-CT)
  • Sen. Murkowski, Lisa (R-AK)
  • Sen. Durbin, Richard J. (D-IL)

The reason I highlighted the Republicans is to show how they are just as anti-Second Amendment as any Democrat, and how even the Trumpists on the list are participants in finding ways to disarm America.

Even though the NICS background check system has been broken for many years, the current state of affairs began under the “leadership” of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.

Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan were in complete control of Washington in March 2018 when they gave us a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, a bill that included anti-gun legislation in the form of a hidden rider that provided billions of dollars to finance the so-called “Fix NICS Act.”

Fix NICS was co-sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — you’ll find his name above in the list of sponsors of NICS Denial Notification Act — and allegedly provided “improvements” to the broken background check system.

In reality, the only improvement Fix NICS provided was an expansion of government’s power to keep people from buying a gun for something as minor as unpaid traffic tickets and setting things in motion to establish an FBI data base (national gun registry) of all gun owners.

Seizing the anti-gun momentum of Fix NICS, then-Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) introduced the Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act, a bill requiring the creation of a government-run “searchable, computerized database” of any and all records pertaining to the sale, importation, production, and shipment of firearms.

This is also when Democrats in the House — who were the minority party at the time — introduced the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act, a bill prohibiting gun ownership without a license and required a license to buy, sell, transfer, or receive a gun. The Blair Holt bill also requires the U.S. attorney general to maintain a “federal record of sale” system to track every gun purchase made in America.

In a statement from President John Feinblatt about the passage of Fix NICS, he said that while the bill is a good start it doesn’t go nearly far enough:

“If all Congress does is pass the Fix NICS Act, then lawmakers will have failed to meet this moment and do their job. Across America, students, educators, mothers and fathers are demanding that Congress finally get serious and meet this moment with robust action to reduce gun violence. This bill is a small step forward. Congress needs to do much more, starting with legislation to require criminal background checks on every gun sale — supported by 95 percent of Americans.”

*Just a reminder: I wrote about Biden’s national gun registry and how Republicans helped make it happen just yesterday.

As Gun Owners of America points out, nearly 9 out of every 10 NICS denials are false reports, and the types of people impacted by them run the gamut:

  • Senior citizens, who despite serving their country honorably in the military, are prevented from buying guns because of misdemeanors from their teenage years.
  • Military veterans, who suffer from PTSD and who have guardians handling their finances, are flat-out denied by NICS.
  • And then there’s upstanding Americans, like CA Sheriff John Lopey, who have no idea why they are denied a gun purchase by NICS.

As Constitution-killing Republicans and Democrats spin their hyperbolic anti-Second Amendment rhetoric about the need for expanding background checks for gun buyers, remember that NICS rejections are inaccurate 90 percent of the time. And if we allow them to wield the hammer of big government against people who fail them as criminals of the state, tyrants in Washington will have succeeded in bringing America one stop closer to the complete destruction of liberty.

 

David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.

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