This
is a highly deceptive bill that is supposedly a review of the National
Instant Check System (NICS) system – but is in reality a
federal gun owner registration bill. Currently,
the law requires that approved background checks be deleted from the
system within 24 hours (obviously denials may be kept for a variety of
reasons, including criminal prosecution). This was written
into the NICS bill in order to prevent the federal government from
compiling a list of gun owners. It is possible that the bill
may eventually be amended to provide for the collection of firearms
information as well, but IT is not required at this point.
Currently, the law requires that approved background checks be deleted
from the system within 24 hours (obviously denials may be kept for a
variety of reasons, including criminal prosecution). This was
written into the NICS bill in order to prevent the federal government
from compiling a list of gun owners. It is possible that the
bill may eventually be amended to provide for the collection of
firearms information as well, but IT is not required at this
point. That said, this bill would definitely permit the
federal government to collect and retail the personal information of
all future gun buyers FOREVER. (You can download a copy of the bill by clicking HERE.)For those who are not familiar with the current federal system, this is how it works. There are three components of the system. When a dealer receives a firearm from his supplier (or anyone else), he or she logs it into a hard copy book called a “bound book”. When you go to the dealer to buy a gun – or pick up one you have ordered off of the internet – you first fill out a 4473 form with all of your personal information (SS# is optional, but prevents confusion). You also must declare under penalty of perjury that you are not in any of the prohibited categories. The dealer than contacts the NICS system and ask for a background check. In the vast majority of cases, you will be approved within 30-60 minutes. The dealer then files the 4473 form and logs the firearm out to you in his or her bound book. The background check is then deleted within 24 hours. With a very few exceptions, the FBI does not know much about the firearm(s) you purchased – beyond if they are rifles, shotguns or handguns. They do not get any model names or serial numbers. That information is on the 4473 and bound book, both of which must be retained by the dealer FOREVER. In the event the dealer goes our of business, they must be surrendered to the ATF.
This system is a compromise that allows for the tracing of crime guns without a full on registration system. When a crime gun is recovered, law enforcement contacts the ATF trace center. They then call the manufacturer of the firearm who tells them what distributor it was shipped to, that distributor then tells them what dealer it was sent to, who then checks their bound book and 4473 form for the retail purchaser's information. There may be some additional steps if the firearms was transferred between dealers, but that is the basic system. I should point out that the ATF is not supposed to copy bound books nor 4473 forms without probable cause – but that has not stopped some agents from trying.
So, how would this change under HR1005? Well, at a minimum, the FBI would be permitted to keep the personal information on approved background checks for as long as they wished. The only restriction would be that they must keep the information for at least 90 days. Effectively, no other bill would be required to begin compiling a list of gun owners. However, I would expect that someone will try to add a new requirement to submit firearms information with the NICS check. This would effectively result in registration at the time of purchase. Significantly, if a so called “universal background check” bill were to be passed, requiring all sales and transfers to go through a NICS check at a dealer, it would become impossible to legally purchase a firearm without a permanent federal record being created. This is EXACTLY how California’s registration system was created – so gun owner’s concerns are well founded. Even if firearms information is not required now, who is to say that it will not be in a year or two?
There is a simple truth regarding gun registration: It eventually leads to gun confiscation. This is true even when this is not the original intent of the law. The most famous case is pre-WW2 Germany. When the NAZIS came to power, they did not have to ask citizens to register their firearms, nor did they have to wonder who owned firearms. Democratically elected governments had already provided all of this information for them. Registration laws had been passed “to keep guns out of the wrong hands” and good Germans had complied. All the new, totalitarian government had to do was cross reference the list of gun owners with the list of “undesirables” and tell them to surrender their guns or else. This is far from the only example – in fact, this is exactly what happened in Venezuela, confiscation followed registration and that was followed by oppression. If the people of Venezuela were armed, do you think that the oppressive totalitarian government ruling that country would still be in power? I think not.
This is why every American, be they gun owners or not, should oppose this bill and any other efforts to register guns or owners.
