Washington, D.C.— Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) took to social media to sound the alarm about gun control legislation he first warned about last year, which at the time was coupled with H.R. 38, the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, in an effort to amend the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act to “require each federal agency and department, including a federal court, to certify whether it has provided to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) disqualifying records of persons prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm.”
“We’ve got about a week to act,” Massie warned on March 6 in a video posted to social media. “I want to let you know what’s going on in Congress as far as gun control goes. You’ve heard a lot of ideas floating in the news—raising the legal age to buy a long gun, for instance—or a new assault weapons ban. Any number of bad things have been mentioned. But I wanted to boil it down for you.”
Back in December 2017, Massie revealed a bait and switch using the concealed carry legislation, which stated that its purpose was to amend “the federal criminal code to allow a qualified individual to carry a concealed handgun into or possess a concealed handgun in another state that allows individuals to carry concealed firearms.”
“What you don’t know, and what virtually no one in Washington wants you to know, is that House leadership plans to merge the fix-NICS bill with popular Concealed Carry Reciprocity legislation, HR 38, and pass both of them with a single vote,” Massie wrote last year. “Folks, this is how the swamp works. House leadership expects constituents to call their representatives demanding a vote on the reciprocity bill, when in fact the only vote will be on the two combined bills.”
The Senate’s version of the Fix NICS Act designated $625 million to expand the national background check database. Massie stated that of the most startling aspects of the legislation is that “it compels administrative agencies, not just courts, to adjudicate your second amendment rights,” which Massie said fulfills an Obama administration agenda of obligating other governmental agencies to add names of people banned from gun purchases to the NICS database.
In reference to the Fix NICS legislation, Congressman Massie noted:
The bill encourages administrative agencies, not the courts, to submit more names to a national database that will determine whether you can or can’t obtain a firearm. When President Obama couldn’t get Congress to pass gun control, he implemented a strategy of compelling, through administrative rules, the Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration to submit lists of veterans and seniors, many of whom never had a day in court, to be included in the NICS database of people prohibited from owning a firearm. Only a state court, a federal (article III) court, or a military court, should ever be able to suspend your rights for any significant period of time…
If we continue to give the executive branch more money and encouragement to add names to the list of people prohibited from buying a firearm (without a day in court) and if the gun banners achieve their goal of universal background checks, one day, a single person elected to the office of President will be able to achieve universal gun prohibition.
According to Massie, Congress is now attempting to include the Fix NICS Act within H.R. 4909, the STOP School Violence Act, which comes to the floor for a vote next week. Massie warned constituents that calling their representatives to express support for “stopping school violence” will unwittingly cause them to be supporting a bill that would task unqualified government agencies to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens.
In terms of how this plays out in the real world, Massie warned, “If you tell someone at the VA that somebody else manages your money, they can take away your right to own a gun. They put you in the NICS database. Not only can you not go to a store and buy a gun, it’s illegal for you to possess a gun or even possess ammunition. And veterans are getting thrown into this system everyday. They’re having their right to own a gun stripped merely because they say they don’t manage their own finances.”
Massie went on to say that “leadership has announced they are bringing FiX NICS to the floor next week. That’s why we only have about a week. They are going to sugar coat it. They’re going to put like a gel capsule around this gun control bill. The sugar coating is HR 4909… what they’re doing is wrapping this horrible gun control — Fix NICS… and puts a wrapper around it called the STOP School Violence Act.”
