Free Republic

Anti-gun New York Sen. Charles Schumer went so far overboard with remarks about an alternative measure to his background check bill during a weekend interview that it appears he is trying to demonize the package because it presents a more palatable option to his colleagues in the Senate. It is Schumer’s “background check” bill that the alternative measure introduced by Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey could derail this week, and the New Yorker clearly isn’t liking it. In a report broadcast by Westchester County’s News 12 and Newsday, Schumer alleged, “This legislation could change Times Square into the OK...

Just Toomey, Collins, Kirk, and Maverick John McCain so far, but expect a few more to flip soon. Jeff Flake’s on the fence but he’s probably worried about voting no on gun control across the board when fellow Arizonan Gabby Giffords is campaigning hard against it in the media. (Since McCain’s apparently voting yes, Flake has some cover to follow suit.) Dean Heller has also been galloping towards the center ever since his close call against Shelley Berkley in last year’s Senate race in purplish Nevada. That’s six Republicans — normally enough to break a filibuster when the Senate’s 55...

Will the ATF's "No Buy" list be any more accurate than TSA's "No Fly" list? If lists are not accurate or meaningful, background checks won't succeed. Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) released a gun-control bill on April 10 that leans heavily on expanding background checks. However, their proposal is only as good as the lists used for the background checks. First, what happened to patient privacy? The Toomey/Manchin proposal proudly announces that their bill "Clarifies that submissions of mental health records into the NICS system are not prohibited by federal privacy laws (HIPAA)." A retired emergency room...

Expanded background checks will be abused. First instance of abuse is where the background checks are used to create in illegal national gun registry. In Pennsylvania it is illegal to have a gun registry... yet one exists !!!! In PA the argument for the registry is that it is really not a registry because it is not 100 % complete, because it only includes new gun purchases. This violates the intent of the law. Illegal registries already exist out of the abuse of background checks. Govt breaks the law. They find tricks to get around the laws. Democrats have already...

Bat Man: A Chicago store owner beats off two armed thugs with a baseball bat as Missouri illegally shares concealed carry records with feds and New York matches private health records with gun permits to take firearms. President Obama, who campaigns for gun control between concerts at the White House and golf outings with Tiger Woods, once famously used the metaphor that in politics if they bring a knife to a fight, you bring a gun. On Tuesday, in the gun-controlled murder capital of Chicago, the president's hometown, store owner Luis Quizhpe, an Ecuadorean immigrant, had no gun, but he...

-- IMAGE HERE -- “So what does a traitor look like?” That is a very good question. After all, a traitor is different than an enemy. An enemy declares himself and opposes you openly. But in order to become a traitor, someone first needs to enjoy your trust. Those of us in the gun rights community have plenty of enemies … people who have openly declared war on the Second Amendment and the Constitution. Heck … practically every Democrat in the country seems to have signed up for a frontal assault on gun owners. But to be betrayed by one...

Those who favor “universal” background checks on gun buyers make some ridiculous arguments. For example, opponents correctly point out that gun buyers with criminal intent will always find channels that require no background check. Gunrunning is among the oldest professions, and the black market will always be with us. Thus the promise of universal background checks -- even if that were a legitimate government activity -- is a fraud, because universality can’t possibly be achieved. Supporters, however, challenge this argument by contending that it proves too much: If requiring background checks is futile as a crime-fighting measure, they ask, why...

On Wednesday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) took to the Senate floor and warned that universal background checks could lead to a national registry system for guns. "Some of the proposals, like for example- universal background checks- would allow the federal government to surveil law-abiding citizens who exercise their Constitutional rights. One of the provisions we expect to see in the bill based on what we saw in the Judiciary Committee- on which I sit- would allow the Attorney General of the United States (Eric Holder) to promulgate regulations that could lead to a national registry system for guns. Something my...

Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Joe Manchin(D-WV) have reached a deal on expanding background checks. Firearms purchases at guns shows, on the internet or “any circumstance involving paid advertising” would be subject to background checks but there would be important exemptions, such as temporary transfers and between close relatives. “Under the terms of the Manchin-Toomey deal all background checks would be conducted by federally licensed gun firearm dealers, who would need to verify the validity of a purchaser’s gun license and record that a check was performed. Background checks would need to be completed within three days, except at gun...

Watch Live Coverage of Congressional Debate on gun control/background checks

Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said Tuesday that he believes the Senate gun control bill deserves an up-or-down vote, breaking from a group of 13 Republicans — including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who have vowed to filibuster the bill. "We have not seen the final draft of the legislation that was produced, I understand, last night, but I think it deserves a vote up-or-down," Isakson told CBS News. --snip-- Isakson also said he could be open to expanding background checks if done in a way that protects free access to guns and mental health privacy. Later in the week,...

A bipartisan group of senators has struck a deal to expand gun background checks to all commercial sales — whether at gun shows, via the Internet or in any circumstance involving paid advertising, according to Senate aides familiar with the talks. The proposed agreement would be more stringent than current law, which requires checks only when purchases are made through a licensed dealer, but less than originally sought by President Obama and congressional Democrats, who were seeking to expand background checks to nearly every kind of sale. The agreement should secure enough bipartisan support for the Senate to proceed to...

Could the much trumpeted goal (by many on the Left and some on the Right) of universal background checks for gun sales be one step closer to being met? Apparently, according to the Washington Post, it is. The Post reports that a bipartisan group of unnamed US senators has struck a deal on the policy. Senators striking the deal include Joe Manchin (D-WV), Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Mark Kirk (R-Ill) and Patrick Toomey (R-PA). The deal in question certainly moves the ball on the issue. Current law only requires that background checks occur when purchases are made through a licensed...

The lamestream media told you: It's only reasonable, and studies show the overwhelming majority of Americans support universal background checks. We're not talking about registering guns. The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: How soon we forget. When the NICS computer was built and turned on by attorney general Janet Reno, in compliance with the Brady bill in 1994, she announced that the system not only would not erase records immediately after a gun-buyer background check as required by law, it could NOT erase records at all. She said it with a straight face, to Congress. The Justice Dept. under Bill...

Universal background checks for gun purchases are an attempt to address a legitimate problem: It really is easy for criminals to get guns, and it really is hard to prosecute those who sell guns to criminals. While licensed gun dealers are required to perform background checks and maintain records, private citizens may sell their guns without so much as asking a question. To prosecute a citizen for an illegal sale, the government must prove that the citizen knowingly gave a gun to a criminal or bought a gun for the sole purpose of transferring it to another party. In surveys,...

NRO’s Andrew Johnson notes that the NRA rushed to counter its own spokesman for the new school-safety initiative shortly after this aired yesterday on CNN, but Asa Hutchinson’s “support” for expanded background checks was, shall we say, nuanced. While Hutchinson did say he was “open” to expanded background checks, his idea for expanding them runs counter to the proposals circulating in Congress at the moment: (video link at source) (snip) Therefore, Hutchinson’s support for expanding background checks sounds more like support for the federal government to enforce the laws they already have on the books. We already know that federal...

As President Obama prepares to head to Colorado on Wednesday to push gun control legislation, some are calling into question the validity of a key statistic he’s using to tout his message on near-universal background checks. During several speeches, Obama has said 40 percent of all gun purchases were made without a background check.

On this Sunday's "Meet the Press," guest-host Chuck Todd was interviewing Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) about the current status of the Senate's gun legislation, specifically what is being called the "Universal Background Check" which Democrats and their media counterparts favor as a "common-sense measure" in reaction to the Newton murders a few months ago. Forget the fact that a background check would have had absolutely no impact on Newtown, or Aurora, or Tucson, or Columbine, or Virginia Tech, or any other high-profile crime; progressives are bound and determined to use these massacres to slowly whittle away at Americans' constitutionally protected,...

WASHINGTON - Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., insists his universal background check measure will reduce crime without infringing on "your ability to borrow your Uncle Willie's hunting rifle or share a gun with your friend at a shooting range." But the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates paint a dark picture of expanding background checks to private purchases, insisting the move inevitably would lead to a national firearms registry. With a registry in place, they say, the stage would be set for the NRA's worst nightmare - gun confiscations. The background check proposal, part of a post-Newtown Senate package facing...

I have been curious regarding how little effort the gun-control crowd has been exerting to prove that mandatory background checks work. There are, after all, six states that require all-private party sales to go through a background check, and ten states that require it for all handgun purchases. If driven to advocate for mandatory checks, you would think the case studies of these sixteen states must have provided plenty of evidence that such laws reduce murder rates, and thus affected your decision. Right? I found this testimony to the U.S. Senate by Dr. Daniel Webster, a public health professor,...