NRO’s editorial about HR297 makes a few good points, but I’m sorry to say, is mostly naïve:
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence saw the horror at Virginia Tech as an opportunity for fundraising and publicity. Most elected officials, however, have responded with appropriate caution. Federal law already prohibits gun purchases by people who are deemed mentally defective or have been involuntarily institutionalized. On Monday, Virginia governor Tim Kaine, a Democrat, directed state agencies to change a reporting procedure that allowed Cho’s name to escape appearing in the FBI’s criminal-background database as it should have. Other states are now likely to review and improve their own practices. Only 22 of them currently submit mental-health records to the database.
In Washington, few politicians have rushed forth with rash demands to “do something.†Congress may even be headed toward passing reasonable legislation that unites gun owners with some of their traditional foes, in the name of preventing people with dangerous mental illnesses from buying firearms.
To some degree, this reflects a new bipartisan consensus in favor of Second Amendment rights. Six years ago, after the defeat of Al Gore, an antigun crusader, many Democrats concluded that they could not afford to continue alienating union members and rural voters. One of the reasons so many new Democrats were elected to the House and Senate last year is that they embraced gun ownership, neutralizing what had previously been a strong advantage for Republicans.
Fine so far (mostly, but I’ll get to that). However:
Nevertheless, Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D., N.Y.) proposed in February what the National Rifle Association has labeled “the most sweeping gun ban ever introduced in Congressâ€: It would revive the so-called assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004 and extend it to include many additional types of shotguns and rifles. Her bill stands very little chance of passage, even in the wake of Virginia Tech. She knows it, too, which is why she has spent most of her time since April 16 promoting H.R. 297, a separate bill she offered in January to improve the quality of information in the National Instant Background Check System (NICS).
The legislation may eventually win an endorsement from gun owners. The NRA, for instance, has a record of supporting efforts to make sure that people appear in NICS when a court determines them to be mentally defective or suicidal. As currently written, H.R. 297 may require a few technical adjustments to guarantee, for instance, that combat veterans who have been diagnosed with short-term post-traumatic-stress disorders aren’t unjustly denied their Second Amendment rights. Yet it promises to serve as the basis for constructive compromise.
I very much doubt that this bill will ever win an endorsement from gun owners, for many different reasons. For one thing, why should the federal government do this? After all, the editors point out that states are already looking at that very issue. Related to that is the inefficiency of NICS. I always get delayed (though I have never been rejected). I’ve never been institutionalized, I have no record, and I fully satisfy every criterion. So why do I always get a delay? Inefficiency and incompetency, which is what you invariably get when dealing with a large, federal bureaucracy. Contrast that with when I walked into the Sheriff’s office to get my CHL here. The woman behind the desk took my form, called the State Police, and fifteen minutes later I walked out with my license. Creating a federal bureaucracy to regulate firearms sales will result in yet more of what NICS does now: People who should be rejected aren’t, and people who shouldn’t be rejected are, or are at least delayed.
The potential for abuse is more than a little frightening. To be fair, the NRO editors tangentially admit this when they say:
As currently written, H.R. 297 may require a few technical adjustments to guarantee, for instance, that combat veterans who have been diagnosed with short-term post-traumatic-stress disorders aren’t unjustly denied their Second Amendment rights.
But they then wave it away, as if it weren’t really a concern. And forget deliberate abuse. Consider the Brady Bill. If you have merely had a restraining order taken out against you, you cannot legally buy a firearm. You are guilty until proven innocent, and to prove yourself innocent, you have to petition a judge. No doubt those who wrote the bill did not mean to write such flagrant abuse into it, yet there it is, and remains to this day.
The reason this bill will never pass, however, is liberal Democrats. We have competing interests in this bill, gun control and the “rights” of the mentally ill. If there is anything we should have learned by now about modern liberals it’s that identity politics trumps all, be it female circumcision, hanging gays in Iran, or whipping female rape victims for sitting in a car. This bill will be no different. As soon as the grievance squad for the mentally ill start howling, HR297 will die.
I don’t usually advise Democrats, but if they’re smart, they’ll let the bill come to the floor and debate it long enough for some Republicans to get on board, and then kill it in the name of civil liberties. That way, they come off as the good guys, both to their pet victim group and gun owners, and the Republicans who were stupid enough to support it will have egg all over their faces. That’s what I’d do if I were a Democrat.
Let the states handle it. They can do a far better job than the federal government ever could.
