Snowflakes in Hell

It looks like the NICS deal with the Democrats has come to light:

Under the agreement, participating states would be given monetary enticements for the first time to keep the federal background database up to date, as well as penalties for failing to comply.

To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks.

It looks like we have won some real concession out of this bill. I’m holding final judgment until I can see the language of the bill itself, but it appears what we’ll get is:

• Ability to remove prohibited status for people with minor infractions. Read, Lautenberg crap? I hope so.
• The 83,000 Military veterans screwed in 2000 would be able to challenge their prohibited status for mental health issues.
• Feds may not charge a fee for NICS checks. Federal government will assume 100% of financing for states to get their information up to date and accurate.
• Faulty records must be scrubbed from the system
• Carolyn McCarthy gets handed a gigantic snub politically, since the NRA would not work with her. Her bill will be supplanted by this one.

I know we’ll have folks who will say the NRA has sold us out, but I think we’ve won some real concessions over this bill. The ability to remove prohibited status is a big step in the right direction, and something we’ve not had for years.

NICS will have more records, this is true, but a lack of NICS record doesn’t affect actual prohibited status. The Virginia Tech murderer’s absence from NICS did not make him lawfully able to buy a gun. By ATF’s guidelines, he was a prohibited person. This bill seems to allow people to actually challenge and remove prohibited status for minor infarctions.

Like I said, I will reserve judgment until I see some actual language, but I’m prepared to say OK to this deal. If that makes me a sellout, so be it. I see this deal as half a step backwards and a whole step forward, which to me is better than just getting crapped on.

UPDATE:

Captain Ed likes the deal
Bitter does too.
Joe Huffman doesn’t like the sound of it.

Jim Kessler of Third Way is either ignorant of the law, or he’s a lying sack of shit. In this article:

But then one day, one of the litigants against the gun industry obtained this data and used it to show negligence and malfeasance among some in the gun industry. So at the expense of law abiding citizens, Congressman Tiahrt, at the request of the NRA, limited the information supplied to police. Post-Tiahrt, police would still learn the name of the original buyer and the gun store that sold it, but that’s about it. If they ask ATF about suspicious activity, ATF is forbidden by the Tiahrt Amendment to divulge it. If that original buyer is also the original buyer of ten other guns traced to crimes across the country, that information is guarded by ATF as if it were the Holy Grail.

The police are still able to request trace data as part of a bonafide criminal investigation. Both the ATF and the Fraternal Order of Police favor keeping the trace data restricted. All Tiahrt does is prohibit the information from being released to cities so city politicians can’t endanger criminal investigations. That’s why the ATF and FOP are opposing relaxing the restrictions on this material.

Also, trace data doesn’t work this way. Trace data allows law enforcement, given a recovered firearm from a crime scene, to find the trail of legal ownership. It doesn’t allow them to find, Tiahrt amendment or no, what other guns a person might own.

For a Progressive Strategy group, Third Way doesn’t seem to accept that gun control has been a disaster as a political issue.  Gun-control supporters aren’t as motivated or organized as we are, and we can hurt a lot more on election day than they can.  If guns rank high in someone’s political calculus, there’s an overwhelming likelihood they are pro-gun.