There’s been a fair amount of talk about new NICS regulations from the right, but I don’t see anything that really causes me great concern. The provisions are:
- Grant access to NICS for tribal police.
- Allow police to use NICS when returning seized firearms.
- Store records for people who have been denied.
I’m not sure that, under the Brady Act, that the President has the authority for provisions one or two, as the Act makes it pretty clear that the NICS system is for the use of Federal Firearms Licensees. State or tribal law enforcement access is simply not mentioned.
This is another case where the Obama Administration is acting unilaterally, beyond its power, but where it’s unclear who would have standing to sue. Federal Firearms Licensees are still permitted to access the system, and therefore aren’t harmed, necessarily, by tribal or or state and local police having access to the system.
The third provision would be allowed under the Brady Act. Perhaps it could be argued that provision one and two are reasonable, but they should require Congress to act rather than the President acting unilaterally.
It would seem 1 and 2 are redundant. Tribal and local police already have access to NCIC, which is where NICS gets most of it’s records from.
That is true however, NCIC does not indicate if a particular person has passed/failed a firearms background check.
Ex: Tribal cop Terry Redsun has a warrant to serve on Mike Playswithsticks and wants to know if he has any penchant for guns. NCIC won’t tell him but NICs will confirm if he has legally acquired or sought to acquire a firearm.
The record of approved people is destroyed after something like 24 hours. I don’t remember exactly.
Even if it was 90 days, I don’t think Terry could get that information as it is supposed to be just a log for auditing purposes.
Where is the actual text of the new rules?
I imagine if 1or 2 leads to an arrest, it shouldn’t be too hard to have that evidence thrown out.
Who is harmed? We are all harmed by the actions of a President – or any other bureaucrat – who exceeds the LIMITs placed on him or her by the Law Of The Land. In that such action violates and denigrates said Law, those actions are criminal, and the impact on respect for Law harms us all.
I agree, but that’s different than what is legally considered harm for the purpose of standing.
I wonder if this is really ATF 51P, which is actually kind of a shit sandwich. ATF 51P is all the worst parts of Sen Begich-Graham’s background check liferaft bill with none of the good stuff.
http://www.atf.gov/content/notice-no-51p-0
Keep a record of denials – sounds fair, until one realizes that a ridiculously high percentage of denials are overturned as errors. would those be deleted? Hah!
State access to NICS has been available for some time now. ATF regulations say that for a state license to be NICS exempt then the state must do a NICS check when the license is issued or renewed (the license must be valid for no more than 5 years as well).