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House vote on bill to strengthen background checks
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
House committee to vote on bill to strengthen background checks
July 23, 2002, 1:42 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two weeks before Rep. John Dingell faces a primary candidate who has criticized his record on gun safety, a House panel is poised to approve a bill he has pushed to strengthen background checks for people buying firearms.
The legislation is aimed at getting more information in the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The system is supposed to identify felons, drug addicts, domestic abusers, illegal immigrants, people who were involuntarily committed to a mental institution and others legally barred from having a gun.
The FBI relies on states and other federal agencies to provide criminal, mental health and other records, but many are incomplete and outdated.
The bill sponsored by Dingell, D-Dearborn, and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., would require states and federal agencies to automate their records and add them to the system. It authorizes Congress to spend more than $1.1 billion for states and courts to comply with the law and is being hailed by gun control advocates.
Dingell has traditionally opposed much of the legislation supported by gun control groups and has been criticized by Rep. Lynn Rivers, D-Ann Arbor, for his record. Dingell and Rivers were drawn into the same district under reapportionment and face off in an Aug. 6 primary election.
Dingell said the bill will keep criminals from getting guns and eliminate delays in the checks. Although most background checks are completed in a few minutes, some take up to three days as police are supposed to find paper records that have not been entered in the database. After three days, the gun must be sold to a buyer if the check has not been completed.
"I want to see to it that an honest citizen doesn't lose his Second Amendment rights because of the fact that the state, local and federal people are so inept that the instant check system does not work," Dingell said.
A report by Americans for Gun Safety found that at least 9,976 prohibited buyers throughout the nation obtained a gun because of faulty records from December 1998 to June 2001.
"Often these files are sitting in a courthouse somewhere, so somebody actually has to physically flip through paper records that haven't been automated," said Caleb Shreve, spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety. "The three days will pass while they are doing this and the gun is legally allowed to be turned over."
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the bill Tuesday morning. At the same time, some of the gun control advocates who support the bill will hold a rally near Dingell's Ypsilanti office to criticize his overall gun record.
"He does this after finding himself in a primary race with someone who is a gun safety supporter and in a new district," said Khalid Pitts, Michigan director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "For victims of gun violence, it's a little too little too late."
Rivers is also a co-sponsor of the bill. She said she hopes it quickly becomes law and that Congress also takes up legislation to require the background checks at gun shows and making permanent the federal ban on assault weapons.
"I think it's the right step to take, but it really addresses only a narrow issue within the whole spectrum of steps that we have to move forward with," Rivers said. http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw59956_20020723.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
July 23, 2002, 1:42 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Two weeks before Rep. John Dingell faces a primary candidate who has criticized his record on gun safety, a House panel is poised to approve a bill he has pushed to strengthen background checks for people buying firearms.
The legislation is aimed at getting more information in the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System. The system is supposed to identify felons, drug addicts, domestic abusers, illegal immigrants, people who were involuntarily committed to a mental institution and others legally barred from having a gun.
The FBI relies on states and other federal agencies to provide criminal, mental health and other records, but many are incomplete and outdated.
The bill sponsored by Dingell, D-Dearborn, and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., would require states and federal agencies to automate their records and add them to the system. It authorizes Congress to spend more than $1.1 billion for states and courts to comply with the law and is being hailed by gun control advocates.
Dingell has traditionally opposed much of the legislation supported by gun control groups and has been criticized by Rep. Lynn Rivers, D-Ann Arbor, for his record. Dingell and Rivers were drawn into the same district under reapportionment and face off in an Aug. 6 primary election.
Dingell said the bill will keep criminals from getting guns and eliminate delays in the checks. Although most background checks are completed in a few minutes, some take up to three days as police are supposed to find paper records that have not been entered in the database. After three days, the gun must be sold to a buyer if the check has not been completed.
"I want to see to it that an honest citizen doesn't lose his Second Amendment rights because of the fact that the state, local and federal people are so inept that the instant check system does not work," Dingell said.
A report by Americans for Gun Safety found that at least 9,976 prohibited buyers throughout the nation obtained a gun because of faulty records from December 1998 to June 2001.
"Often these files are sitting in a courthouse somewhere, so somebody actually has to physically flip through paper records that haven't been automated," said Caleb Shreve, spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety. "The three days will pass while they are doing this and the gun is legally allowed to be turned over."
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on the bill Tuesday morning. At the same time, some of the gun control advocates who support the bill will hold a rally near Dingell's Ypsilanti office to criticize his overall gun record.
"He does this after finding himself in a primary race with someone who is a gun safety supporter and in a new district," said Khalid Pitts, Michigan director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "For victims of gun violence, it's a little too little too late."
Rivers is also a co-sponsor of the bill. She said she hopes it quickly becomes law and that Congress also takes up legislation to require the background checks at gun shows and making permanent the federal ban on assault weapons.
"I think it's the right step to take, but it really addresses only a narrow issue within the whole spectrum of steps that we have to move forward with," Rivers said. http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw59956_20020723.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878