Congress is trying to pass a bill to allow the federal government to pressure people to give up their Second Amendment rights in the name of suicide prevention. At the same time, newly released documents show multiple federal law enforcement agencies have effectively done this to people without congressional approval.
On Thursday, Gun Owners of America (GOA), put all its evidence online that shows the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has permanently disarmed people. The gun rights group is lobbying on Capitol Hill to stop this practice from being codified.
The bipartisan bill called the “Preventing Suicide Through Voluntary Firearm Purchase Delay Act” passed the Judiciary Committee last week. It says the FBI would create a new database for people who volunteer to be blocked from buying or possessing a gun. The “delay” in the bill title refers to the period from which the person put themselves into the database and potentially subsequently took themselves out of it.
The FBI program, which claims it ended in 2019, and the House bill both use a “self-submission” program to make people prohibited who could not be blocked from having a gun under current law. The Brady Law of 1993 created the NICS system of background checks to help enforce the nine prohibited categories of people (from the Gun Control Act of 1968 ) from buying guns.
The House bill would upend federal background check gun law by making it arbitrary who loses the right to own or buy a gun. Under current law, a person is prohibited from buying or owning a firearm for mental health reasons only due to being adjudicated as mentally defective or involuntarily committed to a mental institution. The House bill makes it so people in this new FBI database who have not experienced these situations would still be committing a federal crime by possessing a gun.
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During the committee markup, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), spoke out about the multiple problems with the bill. Massie pointed out that the major flaw in this proposed law is it wouldn’t just affect the person who opts to lose the right to have a firearm. The bill makes it illegal to give or sell a gun to someone on the FBI’s new “Voluntary Purchase Delay Database.”
“If my father added his name to this list ten years ago, and he says, ‘Hey Thomas, loan me a gun, I want to go hunting.'”said Massie. “And he seems of sound mind to me. And I loan him a shotgun. Then he goes out in the woods and kills himself, am I now guilty of a federal crime?”
The Democrats on the committee responded that is “not the intent of the bill.” Massie replied, “What we are marking up is not intent. It’s U.S. code and it’s very precise. People will be convicted based on the language that comes out of here today.”
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More:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/bipartisan-bill-would-let-americans-voluntarily-give-gun-rights
