Posted on 09/21/2007 5:39:56 AM PDT by Brilliant
After 32 people were shot to death at Virginia Tech in April, the new Democratic House moved quickly to close an administrative gap that allowed the killer to buy two guns despite a history of mental troubles.
It was a rare political alliance between the National Rifle Association and its foes on the left, who together seized the moment to try to make federal background checks on gun purchasers more effective. But with students back on campus the Democratic-controlled Senate has yet to act, and the bill is in jeopardy...
For Democrats in Congress, this has been a frustrating year, with numerous presidential veto threats and Republican delaying tactics...
But the saga of the gun-records bill is something different: a self-inflicted wound for the new majority...
But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a turf-conscious Vermonter, insisted that the bill go through his panel and in the process reignited an old fight with his Democratic colleague, Sen. Edward Kennedy...
For House Democrats, the delays were all the more frustrating because the bill's basic framework was already familiar from past Congresses: a mix of carrots and sticks to encourage states to share their mental-health and felony records with federal authorities.
In the Virginia Tech case, the shooter was able to buy firearms in part because relevant court records weren't forwarded to the National Instant Criminal Background System, the data center that helps conduct background checks.
The NRA lent its support to the bill, and to protect its flank against rivals on the right, it also won new language that for the first time allows someone banned from possessing a gun to appeal at the state level to have those rights restored. Some gun-safety advocates criticized this concession, but the bigger problem turned out to be infighting among Democratic senators...
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
NRA = Not Really Americans!
Regulate crazy people, not guns!
“It was a rare political alliance between the National Rifle Association and its foes on the left, “
Except for NFA, GCA68, Brady (compromise), and Machine Gun Ban of ‘86. If I missed any let me know.
If it weren’t for NRA-backed gun control measures, we wouldn’t have any gun control at all.
Not many comments from the NRA-bots that claim that the bill is gun control. It expands the Brady law, which was considered by many as gun control at one time. Then there is the fact that the NRA is the only pro-gun group that supports the bill. Here is to hoping that the bill fails to get out of Congress.
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