House Passes Background Check Legislation

On June 10, we reported that senior House democrats and the NRA had reached a deal on background check legislation both sides could accept. Today, June 13, the House passed the bill on a voice vote. According to the New York Times:

The House bill, a compromise between gun rights supporters and gun control advocates on both sides of the aisle, would provide grant money for states to update the national database that gun dealers use for background checks on prospective buyers. The update would add more criminal records and mental health information to the database.

One of the sponsors of the bill was Representative Carolyn McCarthy, a New York Democrat who has led other efforts to tighten gun control laws and whose husband was killed by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road in 1993. Ms. McCarthy called the bill a “good policy that will save lives.”

The bill now moves to the Senate. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has promised introduce it without amendments “very soon.” Senator Schumer told the Times that “When the N.R.A. and I agree on legislation, you know that it’s going to get through, become law and do some good.”

Boys and girls, good things can happen when people find common ground.

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Hell Freezes Over

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that senior house Democrats and the NRA have reached a deal on background check legislation both groups can accept. The talks started shortly after the massacre at Virginia Tech demonstrated the inadequacy of the current background check law. Fox News.Com reports that the legislation "would require states to supply more-thorough records, including for any mental illness-related court action against a would-be gun purchaser."

According to Post reporter Jonathan Weisman

To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks. Individuals with minor infractions in their pasts could petition their states to have their names removed from the federal database, and about 83,000 military veterans, put into the system by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2000 for alleged mental health reasons, would have a chance to clean their records. The federal government would be permanently barred from charging gun buyers or sellers a fee for their background checks. In addition, faulty records such as duplicative names or expunged convictions would have to be scrubbed from the database.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), a former NRA board member, led the talks. The Post quotes Dingell as saying

"I've been involved with this legislative effort for years, working to address the shortcomings of NICS. I'm confident that this legislation will do it. No law will prevent evildoers from doing evil acts, but this law will help ensure that those deemed dangerous by the courts will not be able to purchase a weapon."

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