From the Washington Times:
House approves $20 million more for gun background checks
The U.S. House on Thursday passed legislation to provide an additional $20 million to incentivize states to submit more records into the federal instant background-check system, handing gun-control advocates a modest win on the issue after a series of high-profile defeats at the federal level.
The amendment to a broader spending bill would bring National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) grant funding to about $78 million. The 2014 level is $59 million, up from $18 million in fiscal 2013. It passed by a vote of 260-145, with one member voting “present.”
Our national criminal background-check system is only as good as the
data you put in it, and right now all the information isn’t getting into
the system,” the six representatives said in a joint statement after
the vote. “When this happens, we can’t enforce the law, and criminals,
domestic abusers, or dangerously mentally ill individuals who otherwise wouldn’t pass a background check can slip through the cracks and buy guns.”
Let's be honest shall we?
The ONLY reason we have a problem with the states not supplying the data on felons and the dangerously ill is that the NRA pushed, hard, to make compliance with the NICS data base voluntary --- and then worked just as hard, if not harder, at the state legislature level to keep compliance from being funded.
While the FBI is the keeper of the various state data bases that comprise the NICS data base, the actual individual data bases belong to the states.
Incentivizing the states is a great start, and helping them to comply is a good idea (some states are badly strapped for funds) but it should be done in conjunction with making compliance compulsory.
We need to make it harder for the dangerously mentally ill to get guns by any means - FFL dealers, but also those who are selling guns at gun shows and private sales.
It is in the interest of gun manufacturers to keep gun sales easy and without restriction even for the most dangerous people -- the drug users, the dangerously mentally ill, and the violent felons. They sell guns to the prohibited people, and then they sell guns to the gun fetishists for self-defense against the people who should not have guns.
After making it EASIER for the dangerously mentally ill to get guns in the first place, they then try to blame mental health issues for the problem, when too easy gun access is clearly the problem.
And if anyone is terrorized, intimidated, injured or killed, hey, what's a little blood, so long as the balance sheet for the gun manufacturers continues to be black, and the radical right thinks they have a wedge issue?
It's a step in the right direction. But you're absolutely right: if it isn't compulsory, the more cash-strapped and far-right states are not likely to comply, so this isn't likely to make a huge difference.
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