The Art of the Deal: Gun Control Advances and Gun Owners Get Nothing
BY DAN ZIMMERMAN
TheTruthAboutGuns.com
AUG 23, 2019
If only America’s gun owners had someone on their side who was skilled at the negotiating process.
[G]un control advocates don’t refer to [the FBI 3-day background check limit] as a “compromise” anymore. Today, this provision is known as the “Charleston loophole” because the FBI failed to process the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina, church shooter’s background check before the 72-hour clock expired.
Right now, Democrats are demanding that the Republican-controlled Senate go into emergency session to pass the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019 (H.R.1112). This bill would undo the 72-hour compromise and extend it to give the FBI 10 business days to perform an “instant” background check. If someone wants to appeal a rejection, the FBI would have another 10 business days to process the appeal. This would allow the government to take 20-21 business days before giving a final determination on a background check that is supposed to be instantaneous.
When you fill out a Form 4473 to start a background check, that application is only valid for 30 calendar days. If you haven’t taken a gun home within 30 days of filling it out, you must go through the process again so the FBI can make sure you haven’t committed a crime in the meantime. In any given year, somewhere between seven and nine months have 21 or fewer business days. This means that if the FBI has 20-21 business days to give a final answer, the government would suddenly have the power to run out the clock on millions of gun purchases every year.
Twenty-five years ago, Republicans told us we had no choice but to give up our rights, but the “compromise” was that in the worst-case scenario, we would only have to wait three days to buy a gun. Today, we are being ordered to “compromise” again and allow the government to take up to a month to give us permission to buy a gun. This is what a slippery slope looks like.
– Max McGuire in Why Does ‘Compromise’ Always Mean Gun Control Wins?
