The U.S. House of Representatives passed two bills on March 11, which gun rights advocates warn are steps towards hindering gun sales and creating a national registry of all law-abiding citizens who bear arms.
House Resolution 8 passed largely along partisan lines 227-203 with five Republicans joining the Democrats. The bill, which has a companion in the U.S. Senate, would expand mandatory background checks for all private gun sales. Current law only requires backgrounds for purchases at a retail or online store.
Similarly, the House also passed H.R. 1446 which extends the FBI’s timetable to do background checks from three days to 10 days.
Rep. Don Young stood before his colleagues to denounce both bills as an attempt to infringe on the right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.
“I’ve watched this debate and I have to say we have an old saying: ‘How do you eat an elephant? It’s a bit at a time.’ We’ve had two bites today,” he said. “I won’t call you Democrats. A lot of you are.”
The Second Amendment is what it is all about to protect the tyranny that could occur by the wrong leaders.
Rep. Don Young
Others, he continued, are socialists who want to take away Second Amendment rights from law abiding citizens.
“This is just a little step forward,” he said. “That’s what you’re really saying – taking away your right to protect your home and your liberty, not just from criminals, but from those who would take away your rights as a government. The Second Amendment is what it is all about to protect the tyranny that could occur by the wrong leaders.”
After the vote, Young posted a statement about the proceedings on his Facebook page.
“We witnessed Democrat after Democrat come to the House Floor and say they believe in the Second Amendment, but we need so-called ‘common sense’ regulations for them,” he wrote. “You don’t have to look far to find their next bites, which would create a federal gun registry, ban online sales, limit accessories like magazines, and implement gun buyback programs – where the government uses your money to ‘buy back’ something from you that it never owned in the first place. These bills are wrong, and I’ll keep doing everything I can to prevent them from becoming law and continue standing up for our Second Amendment!”
Fellow Republican Mary Miller of Illinois also spoke out vehemently against the background check expansion.
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“Criminals looking to get their hands on firearms to use in crimes are not going to submit to background checks,” she said on the House floor. “Only law-abiding citizens will follow the law. This is a back door means of setting up a national registry of firearms — something I completely oppose.”
The gun control measures come at a time when Americans are buying firearms at a record shattering pace. FBI records show that eight of the past nine months have set records for the number of firearms purchased for that particular month. An all-time monthly record was set in January with more than 4.3 million firearms being sold.
According to the National Firearm Industry Trade Association, which tracks gun trends across the nation, many gun retailers report a massive increase in first-time gun buyers. Retailers estimate that 40% of gun sales in 2020 went to first time buyers. The most popular guns among this group were semiautomatic handguns, followed by shotguns.
13 Comments
They already tried this under Obama and it failed. They can’t stop private deals in the backwoods. They can put it on paper all they want. Only the loving liberals will comply. For all the patriots it will be business as usual. The feds said we can’t grow weed either. How’d that work out for ya Diane?
Yet his sorry butt voted to certify a stolen election and install a Chinese Puppet as leader of a Vichy Government. All talk no action by the oldest serving “crock of you know what” in the “House of Traitors.”
There was not a stolen election.
Freddie Lee sheeple! Why don’t you just crawl back in the old stinking hole you came from.
Wish I were more confident our senators will shoot this bill down.
Nice, I see what you did there.
Background checks for all gun sales are not all that bad of an idea. I would add that an annual proficiency test for all “modern sporting rifle” owners should be a requirement. With the guns, I am more concerned about the owners who don’t practice enough and are just “good enough to be dangerous.” A nationwide restriction or ban on types of guns would be about as effective as weed laws were in 2015.
Proficiency test? yeah, that’s a great idea. How many years do you suppose we’ll have to shut down our military while they’re working on meeting that requirement?
Background checks for ALL gun sales will take weeks to clear if not months. Trying to get through to an examiner on the phone will take hours if at all. Putting applications online will still take months to be looked at by an examiner unless they Federal workforce is doubled. I personally don’t have a problem with ALLOWING voluntary background checks between individuals, something you cannot do today. Only professionals can do them today. LOL, kinda ironic if you think about who will be most affected by this bill. Those low income, disadvantaged, most at-risk Americans who can’t prove who they are just to cast a vote. You WILL absolutely need positive identification to pass a background check.
Time for Don to go.
He’s a squish- a RINO.
Where was he on the Tranny bill? Oh, yeah, he didn’t vote.
Odd.
Mike totten is 100 percent right
The largest standing armed populace is the American citizenry with the largest stock pile of ammunition that is why they fear us, UNITED short of them carpet bombing Americans they fear us!!!
Where was Don Young when Trump took our bump stocks?
I hear ya EFROG. They do this everytime a dummie gets into the white house and we just throw our middle finger in the air. They will never learn. The moral of the story is that we dont care about your illegal bills. You’re not authorized to pass such a bill because the constitution doesn’t comply with your collective conscience. The 500 don’t get to tell the other 299 million what to do. Get that thru your thick skull!