The self-described second-largest gun rights group in the United States has split with the National Rifle Association (NRA) by throwing its support behind a bill that would expand background checks on gun sales.
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Bear Arms (CCRKBA),
which boasts around 650,000 members, sent an email to supporters
saying it would back bipartisan gun control legislation drafted by
Senators Joe Manchin III (D-W.VA) and Patrick J. Toomey (R-PA), the
Washington Post reported.
Dubbed the Public Safety and Second Amendment Rights Protection
Act, the compromise bill seeks to broaden background checks to
include gun shows and online sales of firearms. The proposal is set
to go before the Senate by midweek. The act will be the first
amendment voted on in a broader Democratic bill that will also seek
to make gun trafficking a federal crime, and provide more federal
funding for school security programs.
In March, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dropped proposals from
the bill introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA.) that sought to
ban military-style assault weapons and high capacity magazines. The
Senate will now vote on both bans as separate amendments to the
broader bill, though their passage remains unlikely.
The Manchin-Toomey background check deal has gathered support from
both sides of the gun control debate, with the CCRKBA arguing that
the proposal favors the pro-gun side.
“If you read the Manchin-Toomey substitute amendment, you can
see all the advances for our cause that it contains like interstate
sales of handguns, veteran gun rights restoration, travel with
firearms protection, civil and criminal immunity lawsuit
protection, and most important of all, the guarantee that people,
including federal officers, will go to federal prison for up to 15
years if they attempt to use any gun sales records to set up a gun
registry,” the CCRKBA’s Sunday statement read.
The ban on federal authorities setting up a national gun registry –
a record of every firearm legally owned in the country – will
likely resonate strongly with gun owners. The issue is so divisive,
Rep. Jess Duncan (R-SC) compared such a registry to the Rwandan
genocide in a Facebook post on Thursday: “Read about the Rwandan
genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Read that all Tutsi tribe
members were required to register their address with the Hutu
government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for
slaughter at the hands of the Hutu.”
Duncan argued that government access to the names and addresses of
nearly all Tutsis in the country, coupled with the fact that they
were issued identity cards outlining their ethnicity, empowered
“the killers could go door to door, slaughtering the Tutsis. Not
with firearms, mind you, but with machetes… I use this example to
warn that national databases can be used with evil
consequences.”
While the Machin-Toomey bill would expand background checks for
commercial transactions involving firearms, it will exempt family
gifts and transfers, leaving the so-called ‘private-sale loophole’
open.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) championed the compromise bill as a
commonsense approach after throwing her support behind it on
Sunday. Collins is the third Republican to publically announce her
support for the proposal. Democrats say the proposal will need to
enlist the support of at least six Republican Senators to pass.
The bill also seeks to “strengthen” the existing check
system by “encouraging states” to put all their available
records into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
It further proposes the establishment of a National Commission on
Mass Violence “to study in-depth all the causes of mass violence
in our country.”
However, separate amendments limiting military-style assault
weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines are likely to fall
by the wayside.
The CCRKBA’s endorsement comes just days after the group sent out a
press release heaping scorn on the notion of wider background
checks, and insinuating that politicians are the real criminals.
“If politicians want universal background checks, we should
start with them,” CCRKB chair Alan Gottlieb was quoted as
saying on Wednesday.
“If you compare percentages, the rate of criminal activity by
politicians is probably far higher than the rate of crimes
committed by the general public,” he said, adding that
“these people want to know why there’s a run on guns and
ammunition.”
The NRA – with its membership of 4.5 million – remains vastly more
influential than the CCRKBA, despite this rare split in the gun
lobby’s ranks. On Wednesday, the NRA released a statement saying
that the proposal was misguided, and that “expanding background
checks, at gun shows or elsewhere, will not reduce violent crime or
keep our kids safe in their schools.”
Despite the NRA’s stated opposition to the proposal, Adam Winkler
wrote an editorial in the Daily Beast arguing that the
Manchin-Toomey compromise actually benefits the NRA: “It’s
an example of what gun-control advocate Dennis Henigan calls the
‘gun-control Catch-22.’ The NRA forces lawmakers to gut a proposed
law, leaving it with gaping loopholes. Then, when the law
predictably fails to meaningfully reduce gun violence, the NRA
cites it as evidence gun control doesn’t work.”