Congress Advances Gun Registry Via “Universal Background Checks”
March 3, 2019 in News by RBN Staff
Source: www.thenewamerican.com
by Alex Newman
Under the guise of mandating “universal background checks,” Congress is working on a gun-control plot that would ban all private sales of firearms and essentially create a national gun registry. Among other concerns, gun-rights advocates warned that the scheme would enable future confiscation of firearms by government while making countless law-abiding citizens into criminals.
Whether the radical bill will become law remains unclear. But with the Senate likely to vote it down and the White House threatening a veto, gun-rights groups are cautiously optimistic while gearing up for a fight just in case.
With virtually no Republican support, House Democrats rammed through the so-called “Bipartisan Background Checks Act,” or H.R. 8, on February 27. It was not immediately clear what made the legislation “bipartisan,” as just eight GOP lawmakers — all of them left-wing Republicans in Name Only (RINOs) — supported the measure, while 188 voted against it. A handful of Democrats also voted against the bill. Activists hope the embarrassing collapse of expected GOP support will ensure that the bill dies before ever getting out of the U.S. Senate.
Another reason the legislation is so toxic is that it would facilitate future gun confiscation. “The instant background check is gun registration — the government will not answer when we ask how they are destroying the names and addresses, as required by law, of those that have been checked,” then-Gun Owners of America (GOA) chief Larry Pratt told The New American in a phone interview about similar scheming years ago. “They just don’t respond; ‘so sue us’ is kind of the attitude that they have.”
And in virtually every case of gun confiscation throughout history, governments and tyrants created registries of weapons prior to confiscation. Both the National Socialist (Nazi) regime and the Soviet Communist regime relied on such records to disarm their victims, as did many other murderous tyrants. And more recently, European governments and even the state of California have used gun-registration schemes to facilitate gun confiscation. The end goal of those pushing the legislation is total civilian disarmament, GOA and others said.
Additionally, the legislation could make millions of Americans into criminals, analysts warned. For instance, under the bill’s provisions mandating a “Brady” background check prior to each transfer, a person who simply hands their firearm to a friend without asking the FBI while they clean their guns together could be imprisoned for a year. Even gifting a firearm to a stepson or a daughter-in-law would make somebody a criminal under the statute.
The National Rifle Association also slammed H.R. 8. “This extreme gun-control bill will make criminals out of law-abiding Americans,” warned Chris Cox, the executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA). “It will also make it harder for good people to defend themselves and their families. Criminals, on the other hand, will continue to get their firearms the way they always have — through the black market, theft, and straw purchases.”
The NRA vowed to continue fighting the “extreme” legislation, even issuing a statement debunking the arguments made by gun-control advocates. “Forcing more government paperwork and additional fees on good people trying to exercise a constitutional right will do nothing to make Americans safer,” Cox added. “On behalf of our members and supporters, the National Rifle Association will continue to fight to preserve the constitutionally protected right to self-defense.”
Second Amendment groups celebrated the fact that Republicans did not budge. And the few that supported the bill will be targeted by gun-rights activists in the next election. The liberal GOP “list of shame,” as Gun Owners of America is calling it, includes Vernon Buchanan, Brian Mast, and Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida; Peter King of New York infamous for publicly supporting a Soviet-backed terror group; Will Hurd of Texas; Chris Smith of New Jersey; Fred Upton in Michigan; and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania.
