Daniel Defense posted on Facebook their support for the Fix NICS Act.
Dear Friends,
I need your help. I believe the Fix NICS Act (S. 2135), sponsored by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and endorsed by the National Rifle Association (NRA), is presently the only common sense approach to keeping firearms out of the hands of the wrong people. This bipartisan bill, which aims to keep firearms from being sold to criminals and other dangerous people, was introduced by U.S. Senator John Cornyn of Texas. All provisions of this bill have already been voted on and passed in the U.S. House of Representatives. While the bill has enough votes to pass the Senate, we must put pressure on our representatives until the President puts pen to paper.
Our Senators, by passing the Fix NICS Act, can take logical steps TODAY to improve background checks through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). By doing so, states would not only be required to, but would be held accountable for not complying with new reporting procedures which would ensure background checks are complete and reliable. The Fix NICS Act would:
• Mandate federal agencies to report criminal convictions to the
Attorney General
• Require reporting of select mental health records that prohibit the
purchase of firearms (Fix NICS only seeks to require mental health
records that fit current federal categories)
• Hold states and federal agencies accountable for failing to upload
records
The Fix NICS Act is supported by the NRA and NSSF. The purpose of it is very clear, to make it mandatory for goverment agencies to report prohibited persons to NCIS.
There are three mass shootings in recent history that the shooters bought guns because they were not reported to NCIS.
Devin Patrick Kelley, the Southerland Springs church shooter, was court martialed out of the Air Force for domestic violence but the Air Force never reported it.
Jared Lee Loughner, the Tuscon shooter, should have been prohibited but it wasn’t reported to NCIS.
Same with Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter.
Fix NICS is the ONLY bill I’ve seen so far that actually might prevent another shooting and does not punish law abiding citizens.
Unfortunately, some really extreme gun owners decided that Daniel Defense’s support of the NRA/NSSF backed bill was tantamount to S&W deal with the Clinton Administration.
@DanielDefense I was very disappointed 2 learn that DD supports the Fix NICS legislation. While I respect ur right 2 support whatever u want, I find it troubling u would support this anti 2A crap. Sadly I will look for another brand when purchasing my next AR. @RepThomasMassie
— Big Daddy (@coolaidfree46) March 10, 2018
@DanielDefense what rights are you guys gonna try to take away from law abiding citizens today? #turncoats
— Spencer Howe (@MercedesSpenz18) March 10, 2018
So what’s it like knowing you killed yours business with a single post ? I will never by a DD product again. You and those traitors called the @NRAILA have dug your own grave. To everyone else go join @GunOwners they won’t compromise or back down.
— GunDoctorT.V. (@Gundoctor_tv) March 10, 2018
When you call the NRA-ILA traitors, you have gone off the deep end.
We as gun owners could back a bill that will actually work and not be a gun ban, and get some good press (as limited as that may be) for actually taking a stand for supporting keeping guns out of the hands of bad people. But when you take a position like that, it only makes gun owners look worse.
Honestly, I’ve been thinking about proposed gun control laws and there are some wide areas in the law that I believe need to be addressed.
Readers of this blog should by now know that I am a supporter of gun rights and civil liberties. I can’t believe that I feel like I have to say that, but I do.
Part of the problem with the Parkland shooting was that despite everything that we learned about Cruz, nothing he did made him a prohibited person.
Then there is the issue with military veterans and suicide.
I think there is huge problem with the fact that people are either prohibited persons, which is effectively permanent, or not.
I want a national temporary restraining order system for gun ownership. Yes, I know that sounds like what California did, and I agree, the California system is easily abused. But I have come to believe that a temporary ban on gun ownership is a good idea as long as a persons civil rights were protected.
First of all, any temporary ban must come through a hearing. The person should have the right to defend themselves before a judge, with counsel.
The temporary ban should have a built in expiration date. If the petitioner doesn’t repetition, it automatically defaults back to the person having their full rights. Also, there would have to be a limit on the length and number of repetitions allowed. This needs to be in line with the legal concept of Habeas Corpus.
I don’t like the idea that a single civilian can petition a judge. I see that as way for angry ex-wives and pissed off college kids to get revenge. It needs to come from a law enforcement agency or licensed mental health professional.
Guns taken by law enforcement must be returned at the end of the temporary ban. If they are not, compensation is required to be performed by the agency. No “oops, your nice Wilson Combat grew legs and walked out of the storage locker into the Chief’s house, you’re screwed now.”
There are two reasons I think this is a good idea:
One: Parkland. Imagine a person gets the police called on them several (45) times over the course of a few months. Minor things like screaming fights with the neighbors and kicking dogs. None of them is enough to make that person prohibited, but taken together, it is evidence that there is an escalating violent streak.
The police could petition a judge and say”
“We’ve been to this guy’s house to break up fights and deal with threats a dozen times. He’s causing a lot of problems in the neighborhood, but hasn’t hurt anybody yet. Can we take his guns, investigate him, and have him sent to a mental health facility for evaluation? Give us a 60 day restraining order.”
If the investigation leads nowhere, the guy gets his rights back in 60 days. Maybe he needs court ordered anger management. He can have his gun rights suspended for the length of the treatment then get his rights back.
Two: Veteran suicides. PTSD is troubling, but it is curable. I don’t want to take away a veteran’s rights. I also don’t want a veteran to kill himself either. Allow a mental health professional to petition to suspend this person’s gun rights for the time he is bottoming out emotionally. Once he is better, his rights are automatically restored.
The problem right now is a person is either fully legal or permanently prohibited. That makes it tough to prevent a shooting or a suicide as the bar to becoming a prohibited person is high (for a reason, which is good) or some mental illnesses are curable and the person shouldn’t lose their rights forever for a temporary crisis.
A prohibited person can have their rights restored but the onus is on them.
A temporary system, that has a lower bar for restriction on gun ownership, but automatically restores rights would fill that gap.
Yes, I understand such a bill would have to be written VERY carefully and VERY specifically. At every turn it would need to default back to full civil liberties to prevent it from becoming a short cut to prohibition. Yes, I know the Left with try to add a bunch of bullshit to it.
I think this would be very useful to fill the gap in the law right now and might actually help prevent further mass shootings.
Nice post J.Kb
I can tell you that every one of those opposing the bill have not sat down, read it and try to comprehend it.
My biggest fear with “Fix NCS” is the attitude that if better background checks are good why aren’t “Universal” background checks better. I am not in the “NRA are traitors” camp, though I have been disappointed lately with the willingness to cave on 2A principles in the hopes that the left will throw us some love.
I can live with “Fix NICS” if that is as far as it goes; however, history has proven it won’t be.
BTW NRA Life Member since the Mid ’70s
Well, in regards to Cruz, if the School Board and the Sheriff’s Office hadn’t participated in a diversion program to stop juveniles from being arrested, then mayhaps Mr. Cruz would have had a mark on his record that was NICS qualifiable.
Again, due to Government malfeasance, the system the Government uses to keep legal guns out of the hands of ‘bad people’ failed.
Maybe we need laws to protect us from… Government?
Seriously. When will any person in the Air Force be charged with not reporting the qualifying events to NICS? When will the government employees in Broward County be charged for their lack of intelligence and lack of attention and lack of following the laws of the State and Nation? Same with all of the government employees who didn’t report the others to NICS.
Aren’t these government workers supposed to be working for us?
When I peruse various internet gun websites, it never fails that the comment sections have diatribes mashed out by gun owners who have apparently lost their grip on reality. The “NRA are traitors” crowd are the types I’m talking about. The NICS system isn’t going anywhere, despite the detached ramblings of the folks over at GOA. The best thing we could do is hopefully make it function better. This is usually where the anti-NRA crowd begin screeching like liberals and insist that NICS is unconstitutional, and the NRA should accept nothing less than a full repeal of the GCA and NFA. While they’re not totally incorrect, they are most certainly delusional. Some asshole in Vegas massacres people using a bump stock, and you clowns think the political climate is right to demand the deregulation of actual full-auto firearms? The elimination of all background checks? Pull your heads out of your asses. And then they become self-righteous, and proudly proclaim that they aren’t NRA members, and that everyone should join GOA. Nevermind that GOA says a lot of the right things, but is almost never spoken of anywhere other than pro-gun websites. Or that Wayne LaPierre and Chris Cox met with the POTUS the other week, but apparently Erich and Larry Pratts’ invitations must have gotten misplaced. Let them turn on Daniel Defense. I’m not sure if the self-proclaimed constitutional purists realize they’re eating themselves.
Every time I’ve read fix NICS I’ve been unable to find the intolerable stuff some people are screaming about.
GOA is particularly bad about not reading the text of the bill while asserting what it’s going to do. Considering some of the panicked wording from many of these people, I think they’re getting their information from a GOA email.
A person who is demonstrably a danger to himself or others can ALREADY be removed from his guns, because that person can be secured away from them and from the public generally.
Under this post’s proposal for a “TRO for gun owners” a local cop who gets a bug up his ass about a neighbor can have a quick chat with a risk-averse judge (the same judge who rubber-stamps that same cop’s search warrants), then have a police van pull up and take ALL my guns (and presumably all my wife’s guns, too, or what’s the point, thus disarming my entire family) for some undetermined period of time, because he’d like to “investigate” me?
That’s a nice Second Amendment you have there, be a shame if anything happened to it.
The solution to massive government screw-ups that lead to innocent deaths is NOT giving MORE power to the SAME SCREW-UP government and further restricting the civil rights of people who have never harmed anybody.
Incidentally, if a “TRO for gun owners” (which naturally includes people who just own rifles) is a good idea, why not for a “TRO system for fist owners”? Roughly TWICE as many people each year are killed by fists, feet, etc., than are killed by rifles. How about a “TRO system for knife owners”? Roughly FIVE times as many people each year are killed by knives and similar sharp implements as are killed by rifles. How about a “TRO system for car owners”? Roughly TWENTY-SEVEN times as many people each year are killed by drunk drivers as are killed by rifles.
–Andrew
I understand your concerns. That’s why I said a hearing. I don’t want a system where a cop can get a TRO signed by a judge. You and your lawyer need to be there and the cop and the city attorney.
Of course you should have the right to sue the police if you feel this was used in error against you.
Suing the police is expensive. The poor single-mom is not suing anybody after the cops show up and take her guns away. This just sets up a system that preferentially favors wealthy people–like the CCW systems in CA, NJ, NY, MA, MD, you know, every place such schemes are used to suppress 2A rights for “normal people.”
Then give me a solution. Rather than tell me why my idea is bad – and I recognize that there are crappy cops and our justice system is a fallible as any other human endeavor because humans are fallible – what do you propose?
I want to preserve civil rights.
Also, I had a neighbor who picked a fight with me all the time. He’d yell at me if my trash can was still in the curb after 6:00 eve if I didn’t get home from work after that. He’d yell at me if my dog barked once, not a hour long barking session, but once time. He’d get in my face over anything.
So take someone like that who escalates that to threats, shoving, and property damage. Minor things that won’t make someone a prohibited person but will get the cops called. How much of a pattern of escalation do we need to take that guy’s guns away before he shoots someone?
One incident is too little. But a dozen calls to the cops because of the same guy, maybe some intervention is necessary.
How would you deal with that?
People are absolutely going anti-DD apeshit over this, which is too bad. The comments section on their Facebook post is pure cancer, with absolutely no counter-discussion of why Fix NICS is bad. Are there any blogs that are opposed that actually lay their opposition out in a rational manner?
Does the bill still tie bonuses to the number of people an agency reports?
Seer if you can find it I sure did not.
This is the last version published.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/38/text?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22HR+38%22%5D%7D&r=1
Did you post the wrong link or is national reciprocity actually fix nics?
Fix NICS was added to National Reciprocity… go down…
“(ii) BENCHMARK REQUIREMENTS.—Each plan established under clause (i) shall include annual benchmarks to enable the Attorney General to assess implementation of the plan, including—
“(I) qualitative goals and [b] quantitative measures[/b] ;”
And then later….
“(I) NONCOMPLIANCE PENALTIES.—For each of fiscal years 2019 through 2022, each political appointee of a Federal department or agency that has failed to certify compliance with the record submission requirements under subparagraph (C), and is not in substantial compliance with an implementation plan established under subparagraph (G), shall not be eligible for the receipt of bonus pay, excluding overtime pay, until the department or agency—
“(i) certifies compliance with the record submission requirements under subparagraph (C); or
“(ii) achieves substantial compliance with an implementation plan established under subparagraph (G).”
Doesn’t say what the “quantitative measures”, but quantitative means numbers. Like a quota.
So here’s my rational, reasoned issue with this. If agencies have a quota, and the agency head is not going to be able to buy his house in the Caribbean because the agency is 20 short of the quota…. Well I’m pretty sure the agency head cares more about his bonus than the rights of 20 random people reported to nics “accidentally.” The law includes a requirement for finding reporting inaccuracies, and what better way to meet that requirement than to intentionally include inaccuracies?
My somewhat less rational but still reasoned issue: I do not trust President Kamala Harris’ HHS Secretary to not “accidentally” add everyone who has ever been on an SSRI to the NICS denial list.
My inner kindergartener reasoning: You cannot have any more of my damned cake.
Quantitative and quota are not the same thing. Plus it would be brutally idiotic for a LEO/Judicial department to add people who are not prohibited and risk that the bonuses not only do not get paid but if any was paid, having to return if and its personnel being accused and prosecuted for fraud.
I looked into the last update in mid-December when it died last time. There were a few things that bothered me, like, § 926D section e.2 which states, “(2) The term ‘handgun’ includes any magazine for use in a handgun and any ammunition loaded into the handgun or its magazine.”
That seems to define things so that not only is your handgun a handgun, your magazine is a gun and ammunition in that magazine is a gun. That could argue a loaded 15-round magazine would be 17 handguns.
It’s probably just worded poorly, I think they were trying to say that a magazine loaded into a handgun is just part of the handgun, but that doesn’t look like what they actually say. I’d guess that this particular issue could be reworded in 15 minutes if it was private sector, a day for congress. Just change that to say, “A ‘handgun’ includes …”, not “The term ‘handgun’ includes…”
I did a post about this last December and had several people saying it was bad. I replied that I have the bill in front of me, just tell me what you don’t like. No one gave me a specific.
https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/Get-onboard-the-Grassley-Cruz-Bill-/5-2090372/
Supposedly they’re dusting off an old Reid bill that does much the same thing as Fix NICS and has some bonus stuff too.
It makes sense….