Bearingarms.com: Background Check Bills Heading for Possible Wednesday Vote

Reuters reports that we could be headed a vote on gun control legislation in the House by mid-week.  According to the report Nancy Pelosi will bring two bills dealing with background checks to the House floor for a vote on Wednesday.  Bearingarms.com's Cam Edwards spoke with the Second Amendment Foundation's Alan Gottlieb yesterday and Gottlieb said SAF has been hearing from a lot of SAF members who are strongly opposed to the anti-gun bills being pushed through the House by Nancy Pelosi.

“The one that would allow the FBI to not approve a sale for no reason, per se, and just hold it forever; obviously that’s a direct infringement on people’s rights to purchase a firearm,” Gottlieb explains. “And the waiting period that they’re trying to put through has a lot of devils in the details.”

That bill is HB 1446, and would allow the FBI ten days, instead of the current three, to conduct a background check on gun purchases. Even worse, if the agency doesn’t respond within ten days, the seller of the firearm still can’t release the gun to the purchaser. Instead, they would have to formally petition the government (in writing) for permission to complete the transaction. As Gottlieb says, a right delayed is a right denied, and this would absolutely have a chilling effect on the ability of law-abiding Americans to purchase a firearm.

So too would the so-called universal background check bill that’s also expected to get a vote on Wednesday. I asked Gottlieb if he saw a contradiction in the position of Democrats who are complaining about overpolicing and overincarceration while preparing to create a new crime out of thin air; and one that could result in a year-long stay in federal prison for those convicted of transferring a firearm without first conducting a background check.

“There’s a definite contradiction,” Gottlieb replied, “but hypocrisy and contradictions mark what our opponents are all about. None of this surprises me at all. You know, less police on the streets, higher crime, and then they take your right to keep and bear arms away from you so you can’t protect yourself. I don’t understand where they’re coming from, but again, it’s hard to understand crazy.”

Even if your representative is anti-rights, they need to hear from you that you opposed HR8 and HR1446.

House Impeachment Inquiry Puts Brakes on White House Gun Control Talks

Yesterday, Cam Edwards of Bearingarms.com interviewed Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation.  Gottlieb talked discussed his thoughts on where congress may be headed.  At the beginning of the program, Cam mentioned that the White House has put the brakes on discussions related to gun control with the House of Representatives talk of impeachment.  You can hear Cam's report and the interview below.

Discontent Among Gun Groups Over Initiative 594

The Washington Post has a piece this morning on its GovBeat blog that says Washington State firearm advocates are asking where the NRA is in the battle to defeat Initiative 594, the ballot measure that would criminalize transfer of firearms between anyone, even at training sessions, that does not involve a background check:

“The NRA has really not been involved at all until very recently, and not in the area of spending significantly at all,” said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. “I have no idea why. We have a coalition made up of all the gun rights groups in Washington, and they are not participating. They’re doing their own thing.”

Barron Barnett, a pro-gun rights activist, asked in a recent blog post: “Where the F*** is the NRA?!” “[T]he NRA is more than happy to take my money but then is no where to be found when things actually go sideways,” Barnett wrote.

From what I can tell, NRA has been active getting the message out to defeat I-594. It was the cover story on this month's America's First Freedom. Cam Edwards has covered it a number of times on NRANews.com. But, it appears that some think that the NRA needs to match Billionaires Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg, and others pushing the initiative dollar for dollar. NRA has been active in other ways too:

Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the NRA in Virginia, said the group has had two full-time staff on the ground for months. He estimated that the NRA has spent a total of $300,000 to $400,000 so far against I-594, with that number likely to grow in the final two months before Election Day. That figure doesn’t include communications with members and those who receive the NRA’s magazines and publications, he said.

It's true that the pro-I594 forces have raised over $7 million. But, it doesn't serve our cause for pro-rights groups to complain that some are doing more than others to defeat the measure. And as Arulanandam told the Post, while money is important, the Milwaulkee County Sheriff's race proved the power of grassroots. That's where I-594 will be defeated. And the grassroots is the NRA's strength.