The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday passed a bill that would require “universal background checks” for all firearms purchases.
The Committee also postponed consideration of a ban on “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines till Thursday over a conflict in Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D. Calif.) schedule. Feinstein introduced the ban to the Senate.
The idea of universal background checks has drawn criticism from gun rights communities, as it’s believed that these checks will lead to a national firearms registration, though Sen. Charles Schumer (D. New York), one of the Senate’s most ardent gun controllers, denied this.
“The bill explicitly says there is no registration, explicitly says no confiscation,” Schumer said. “It's sad, right after Newtown there was a view that maybe the right place that we could all come together on was background checks.”
It isn’t just Democrats who are in favor of these new gun control efforts, as Republicans and even the NRA have been working to implement new gun laws. According to Ammoland. com, “The NRA is cutting backroom deals to centralize gun owner data collection into the Obama/Holder massive government data base.”
The group is doing this because a “centralized system is less costly to fight and far more lucrative for the NRA to appear to be ‘fixing’,” Ammoland’s report continues, adding, “Like all establishment political lobbies the key to their job security is assisting in making problems they end up being called upon to ‘fix’.”
Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, according to Ammoland, is giving in to what the Obama administration wants in order to appear as though he’s helping to “fix” gun problems, and Republican Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R. Va.), is “providing political cover for the sneaky back room gun control deals and gun grabbing sell outs that his political masters - – John Boehner and Eric Cantor – - are cutting with Obama and his corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder.”
There are, however, Republicans who are opposed to the new gun control legislations. Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn had been taking part in the negotiations over the proposed legislations but dropped out because he was concerned over where the information from the background checks would be stored. This caused the negotiations to come to a standstill.
The ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, opposes universal background checks and expressed concern that the legislation would lead to a registration.
While the bill that the Committee passed on Tuesday may not lead to registration, another proposed law may have a harder time convincing gun rights activists that registration isn’t on the radar, as its title is the Forced Gun Owner Registration Act.
Besides Republicans, there are Democrats who may oppose new gun control efforts due to gun owning constituencies. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D. Nev.), for instance, opposes the new assault weapons ban and helped defeat a proposed ban in 2009.
http://www.examiner.com/article/senate-judiciary-committee-passes-universal-gun-...
