NRA-ILA email

[jcreek]

Got this email from the NRA-ILA today. Out of curiosity who would support background checks for private sales at shows and for online sales, as well as increasing reporting for metal health diagnoses to NICS?

Dear NRA Member:

The U.S. Senate is set to act on anti-gun legislation as early as this week. These proposals are the latest attempt by anti-gun Senators to erode our Second Amendment rights by making it illegal for law-abiding gun owners to transfer firearms without the federal government’s approval; and by banning commonly owned semi-automatic rifles and magazines, to name a few. Unfortunately, none of these proposals address the critical issues of fixing our broken mental health system; securing our schools; or prosecuting violent criminals.

However, there is a proposal worthy of gun owners' support. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mark Begich (D-AK) have introduced S. 480, the "NICS Reporting Improvement Act of 2013", which will provide accurate definitions of persons who pose serious threats to themselves or others and therefore should be prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms, while protecting the rights of those who should not be included in NICS. Further, this legislation will protect the rights of America's veterans, by no longer allowing their Second Amendment freedoms to be denied based on an administrative finding that a person requires appointment of a representative to mange his financial affairs.

The NRA fully supports Senators Graham and Begich's important legislation.

 

[markr64]

here is the actually Bill in the US Senate NICS Reporting Improvement Act of 2013 (S. 480) - GovTrack.us

 

[blarg]

problem is, who gets to define "pose a serious threat to themselves or others"? In California where this system is already in place, when a gun owner goes to a psychiatrist because they're having a hard time with something, Sherriff's deputies show up at their home and confiscate all the guns in the house...even ones that are owned and registered to other people in that house. In New York, when a kid threatened a bully with a fluorescent orange squirt gun, cops showed up at his house, confiscated all the guns owned by the parents and revoked their permit to own guns until after the kid turns 18 and moves out of the house.

so when you don't define terms like "serious threat to themselves or others" and pass laws allowing beurocrats to collect this kind of information some overzealous busybody is going to find a way to use that information to harass people whose behavior they don't approve of.

Imagine if someone wanted to pass a law requiring a national registry of people who have gotten abortions.

I'm a life NRA member, but they're wrong on this one.

 

[S&W645]

Read the legislation and it changes your mind as whether to support it or not. The few changes it makes are good ones IMHO. It forces a hearing at which the accused has a right to legal representation and the accused has to receive that notice of hearing before a hearing can be held. No more VA behind closed doors midnight decisions. And sets higher standards for what a mental facility has to be. Also changes a stigma name " mental defective" to a better put " mental incompetent". Must be an involuntary commitment, not someone who seeks help.

Text is at Full Text of S. 480: NICS Reporting Improvement Act of 2013 - GovTrack.us

 

[S&W645]

problem is, who gets to define "pose a serious threat to themselves or others"? In California where this system is already in place, when a gun owner goes to a psychiatrist because they're having a hard time with something, Sherriff's deputies show up at their home and confiscate all the guns in the house...even ones that are owned and registered to other people in that house. In New York, when a kid threatened a bully with a fluorescent orange squirt gun, cops showed up at his house, confiscated all the guns owned by the parents and revoked their permit to own guns until after the kid turns 18 and moves out of the house.

so when you don't define terms like "serious threat to themselves or others" and pass laws allowing beurocrats to collect this kind of information some overzealous busybody is going to find a way to use that information to harass people whose behavior they don't approve of.

Imagine if someone wanted to pass a law requiring a national registry of people who have gotten abortions.

I'm a life NRA member, but they're wrong on this one.

See my comment above. Voluntary in your case means the cops have no say.

‘(ff) required involuntary inpatient treatment by a psychiatric hospital;

And

does not include--

‘(I) a person who is in a psychiatric hospital for observation; or

‘(II) a voluntary admission to a psychiatric hospital.

 

[blarg]

Read the legislation and it changes your mind as whether to support it or not. The few changes it makes are good ones IMHO. It forces a hearing at which the accused has a right to legal representation and the accused has to receive that notice of hearing before a hearing can be held. No more VA behind closed doors midnight decisions. And sets higher standards for what a mental facility has to be. Also changes a stigma name " mental defective" to a better put " mental incompetent". Must be an involuntary commitment, not someone who seeks help.

Text is at Full Text of S. 480: NICS Reporting Improvement Act of 2013 - GovTrack.us

sure...burying gun owners in paperwork and legal fees is MUCH better than taking their guns. I can't support ANY legislation that leaves ME having to prove why I should get to keep my rights with the default position being I shouldn't unless I have a very good lawyer. Throw in a bullet tax and gun insurance and you won't even need to ban guns at all! only the privileged class will be able to afford to have them.

"a few good ideas" isn't enough. It should be ALL good ideas. Hitler had a few good ideas too.

It's not that I think the law itself in a "common sense" world is a bad one. In a vacuum it may very well be a good law. Problem is, we don't live in a common sense world. We live in a world where some communist lefty will find a way to use the information to move the gun grabber agenda forward. Today it's just involuntary commitment, but once the system is in place to monitor these things it's not very hard to change the parameters...or simply define any person who would WANT to own a gun as insane and in need of being committed. Sounds crazy, but who would have thought that the Internet Security Bill would one day be modified to make criminals out of pretty much anyone...oh yeah....all the crazy paranoids did.

I could make the same argument could be made for background checks for abortions just to make sure the person is mentally competent to make such a decision...I wonder if the lefties would be just as gung-ho about that.

The libertarians would argue that being a danger to yourself is your own business. If a person wants to commit suicide, should their guns be taken away? Whose business is it? According to this law, a person who contemplates suicide would have all their guns and potentially all the guns of everyone he lives with.

 

[Jarhead6541]

NY Gun Confiscation Underway - Citizens Told to Turn in Pistol Owner ID & Firearms

“John Doe, an upstanding professional with no outstanding criminal convictions and no history of violent action received a letter from the Pistol Permit Department informing him that his license was immediately revoked upon information that he was seeing a therapist for anxiety and had been prescribed an anxiety drug. He was never suicidal, never violent, and has no criminal history. The New York State Department of Health is apparently conducting a search of medical records to determine who is being treated for anxiety drugs and using this as a basis for handgun license revocation.

Read more at Ammoland.com: NY Gun Confiscation Underway - Citizens Told to Turn in Pistol Owner ID & Firearms

Check this story out and decide if your willing to give in to Big Brother. There are thousands of potentially mind altering drugs that could be added to this list.How far will this go? To me this sounds like you can forget going to the doctor if you want to keep your weapons. Not in my world.

 

[BluesStringer]

Read the legislation and it changes your mind as whether to support it or not. The few changes it makes are good ones IMHO. It forces a hearing at which the accused has a right to legal representation and the accused has to receive that notice of hearing before a hearing can be held. No more VA behind closed doors midnight decisions. And sets higher standards for what a mental facility has to be. Also changes a stigma name " mental defective" to a better put " mental incompetent". Must be an involuntary commitment, not someone who seeks help.

Text is at Full Text of S. 480: NICS Reporting Improvement Act of 2013 - GovTrack.us

The last "NICS Improvement Act" was in 2007. Inroducing sponsor was Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY4), and the bill ostensibly set up mechanisms for vets to have their 2A rights restored after having been adjudicated to be mentally defective. The N R A and the Brady Campaign supported it.

The GOA however, referred to it as the "Veterans Disarmament Act" because of it's wildly ambiguous language that gave all manner of "official" entities the power to "adjudicate" someone a mental defective. Obviously, the GOA opposed it. They (we) lost. The N R A joined McCarthy and the Brady Bunch in celebrating their "victory" while I joined the fight to have Bush veto the bill. With the N R A on board, it was an uphill battle to get gun owners Link Removed. Generally-speaking, only non N R A members seemed willing to consider the obvious faults. Bush signed the bill with no real opposition, on the basis that it would help restore the rights of 140,000+ veterans who had supposedly been denied same.

So that synopsizes my familiarity with the NICS "Improvements" thus far. Then I see this thread. I went to the link you gave, S&W645, for the full text of the bill. The only mention of modifying the 2007 "improvements" says the 2013 "improvements:"

(b) Technical and Conforming Amendment- The NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 (18 U.S.C. 922 note) is amended--

(1) by striking ‘as a mental defective’ each place that term appears and inserting ‘mentally incompetent’;

(2) by striking ‘mental institution’ each place that term appears and inserting ‘psychiatric hospital’; and

(3) in section 102(c)(3)--

​

(A) in the paragraph heading, by striking ‘AS A MENTAL DEFECTIVE OR COMMITTED TO A MENTAL INSTITUTION’ and inserting ‘MENTALLY INCOMPETENT OR COMMITTED TO A PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL’; and

(B) by striking ‘mental institutions’ and inserting ‘psychiatric hospitals’.​

​

In short, this new law does nothing to modify or "improve" the horrendous details of the 2007 "improvements" act. Either of the links above, the one to one of the more complete GOA alerts on the piece of legislation, or the one to another forum where I tried to alert members of the problems with the bill, will detail those objections for anyone willing to actually read and understand the writings. The only short-hand description I can pull from my linked post on another site says:

The makeup of the "board" or "commission" or "other legal authority" is not specified, but more importantly, not mandated to be made up of a body that adheres to the due process protections of The Constitution. It might be confusing seeing all that legalese when only a few words, distilled down to the text's real meaning, are pertinent, so let's do just that; break it down. Basically what it is saying is.....

The Federal Government may not provide to the Attorney General any record of adjudication related to the mental health of a person, or any commitment of a person to a mental institution if....

....the adjudication, or commitment, respectively, is based solely on a medical finding of disability without a hearing by some doctor, or self-appointed "commission" or "board" of doctors and/or lawyers, or perhaps just some local anti-gun yahoos "officially" appointed by a Mayor or County Commission or whatever, because this law does not stipulate what constitutes a "legal authority."

I'd be interested to know what you thought about the 2007 "improvements" act S&W645, or if you knew about any controversies such as those highlighted in the two above links. I would also be interested to know if you think this new act does anything to ameliorate any of the 2007 deficiencies, assuming of course, that you agree deficiencies existed therein.

Blues

PS: The link I gave to one of my posts on another forum is not intended to represent the entirety of my objections to the 2007 amendments bill to NICS. If you want the entirety of my position, it can be found by reading that whole thread, though, like many threads here that includes discussions not particularly friendly to N R A positions, it gets a bit contentious. But there's a ton of good info there nonetheless.

 

[S&W645]

I was also against that act and think that this goes further to correct it. The 2007 act did not require prior notice to allow legal representation as I recall.

shall provide both oral and written notice to the individual at the commencement of the adjudication process including--

I may be wrong but I believe the gov't notice wasn't given to some until the hearing started nor were they told about legal reps. And BATFE under their typical heavy handedness misstates the laws in BATFE Letter Re: Mental Disqualification - Gun Owners of America.

Such protections are important because whether a person has been adjudicated a mental defective or committed to a mental institution, the firearms disability is permanent.

Disability to own a gun is not permanent and can be removed whether they like it or not.

(B) RELIEF FROM DISABILITIES- In the case of an adjudication related to the mental health of a person or a commitment of a person to a mental institution, a record of which may not be provided to the Attorney General under paragraph (1), including because of the absence of a finding described in subparagraph (C) of such paragraph, or from which a person has been granted relief under a program established under subparagraph (A) or (B), or because of a removal of a record under section 103(e)(1)(D) of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, the adjudication or commitment, respectively, shall be deemed not to have occurred for purposes of subsections (d)(4) and (g)(4) of section 922 of title 18, United States Code. Any Federal agency that grants a person relief from disabilities under this subparagraph shall notify such person that the person is no longer prohibited under 922(d)(4) or 922(g)(4) of title 18, United States Code, on account of the relieved disability for which relief was granted pursuant to a proceeding conducted under this subparagraph, with respect to the acquisition, receipt, transfer, shipment, transportation, or possession of firearms.

Guess it isn't is it BATFE? BATFE admit to this on the Form 4473 April 2012 instructions for 11f. It also didn't differentiate between involuntary and voluntary commitment in the 2007 act.

While I'd love to see many of the laws just outright scrapped, chipping away at them is also worthwhile.

 

[jcreek]

I apologize if I mislead anybody by this post into believing I support this bill. I have not had the opportunity to read through it yet so I have not formed an opinion on it. However I feel that if some of the kinks that you guys have posted about get worked out, then in theory reporting mental deficiencies to might not be a bad idea. Veterans are a complicated issue. Most veterans diagnosed with PTSD pose no threat to anybody while a few actually do. On top of that, PTSD diagnoses are handed out like candy to anyone looking to collect disability. I had 4 Marines from my battalion claim PTSD, after returning from a humanitarian deployment to the Black Sea region. No combat, no danger, just building schools and medical facilities for impoverished communities in several countries. That kind of crap sickens me and honestly maybe they should lose their rights.

 

[BluesStringer]

While I'd love to see many of the laws just outright scrapped, chipping away at them is also worthwhile.

You lost me there. How is passing amendments (or "adding to") a law the same as "chipping away" at the same law?

Aside from that, I don't think you understood my concerns with the 2007 amendments. It's kind of complicated, and I tried not to reargue what I was involved in arguing for several weeks back in '07, so my previous post was probably hard (if not impossible) to follow. My main concern with this revision is that I don't see where it fixes the deficiencies of the '07 revisions, at least not the ones I was most focused on. I'll try to be brief, but the problem is that the wordage used that I am concerned about is spread over multiple sections, so I have to cite those sections before I can distill it down to what I think is the offending wordage. So bear with me....

The pertinent section that I'm referring to is:

SEC. 101. ENHANCEMENT OF REQUIREMENT THAT FEDERAL DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES PROVIDE RELEVANT INFORMATION TO THE NATIONAL INSTANT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK SYSTEM.

(c) Standard for Adjudications, Commitments, and Commitments Related to Mental Health-

(1) IN GENERAL- No department or agency of the Federal Government may provide to the Attorney General any record of an adjudication related to the mental health of a person, or any commitment of a person to a mental institution if--

(A) the adjudication, or commitment, respectively, has been set aside or expunged, or the person has otherwise been fully released or discharged from all mandatory treatment, supervision, or monitoring;

(B) the person has been found by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority to no longer suffer from the mental health condition that was the basis of the adjudication, determination, or commitment, respectively, or has otherwise been found to be rehabilitated through any procedure available under law; or

(C) the adjudication, or commitment, respectively, is based solely on a medical finding of disability, without an opportunity for a hearing by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority, and the person has not been adjudicated as a mental defective consistent with section 922(g)(4) of title 18, United States Code, except that nothing in this section or any other provision of law shall prevent a Federal department or agency from providing to the Attorney General any record demonstrating that a person was adjudicated to be not guilty by reason of insanity, or based on lack of mental responsibility, or found incompetent to stand trial, in any criminal case or under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

​

If you refer to section 922(g)(4) of Title 18, US Code, you will see that this new legislation is not restricted by it, but rather, this legislation expands on the word "adjudicated" to include unspecified "boards," "commissions" and "other legal authority." Code as follows:
​

Link Removed

(g) It shall be unlawful for any person -

(4) who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has
been committed to a mental institution....

(g, continued)
to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess
in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive
any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in
interstate or foreign commerce.

​

The makeup of the "board" or "commission" or "other legal authority" is not specified, but more importantly, not mandated to be made up of a body that adheres to the due process protections of The Constitution. It might be confusing seeing all that legalese when only a few words, distilled down to the text's real meaning, are pertinent, but that's the gist of my objections to this legislation.
​

OK, that was an excerpt of a post I made at another forum back in '07. The language is wildly ambiguous as to what constitutes a board, commission or "other legal authority" sufficient to deem someone a mental defective. It leaves it wide open to local interpretation. Actually, it eliminates interpretation altogether and simply leaves the construct of these unspecified boards, commissions and other legal authorities just plain ol' wide open to almost any individual or group any government authorizes to function in such a capacity. No court or judicial entity is mandated to be a part of the determination of one's mental state under this revision. No agency, doctor or legal adviser is provided for the individual about to have his/her constitutional rights denied them.

And don't forget, this revision was staunchly supported by the N R A and the Brady Bunch, just as the new 2013 revisions are supported by the N R A. Forgive me for being just a tad bit suspicious of such dubious couplings.

So anyway, my concern about the 2013 revisions is that I didn't see in it where any of the above is even touched, other than exchanging "mental defective" for "mentally incompetent" and one or two other politically correct word-changes.

Did you see anything that further defines, limits, authorizes or otherwise regulates the unspecified "boards, commissions or other legal authority" S&W645? Because if it doesn't, I fail to see how it could possibly fix or improve anything in the '07 revisions or the base law itself.

Blues

 

[UATKP]

Recently, a young veteran's home was illegally raided by DHS with authorization of local law enforcement. (Can't remember the post, but it is on this forum somewhere). They confiscated all of his legally owned weapons, and he still hasn't gotten them back. He was illegally arrested, and taken to a mental hospital. All because of exercising his right to think for himself and give his opinion of the assholes in the white house. He was not mentally ill nor incompetent, nor did he suffer from any other mental malady.
According to this bill, he would lose his right to keep and bear arms.
The whole thing is a farce, and should be ruled illegal, and scrapped... along with the assholes in the white house.
JMVHO.
Molon Labe.