People may have forgotten the cruel and repressive legislation that was the hallmark of the GOP-controlled House and Senate under Trump. This post is just a reminder – their bills are already on the rolls, waiting to reappear, if we don’t do our job and keep them out of office. Vote, Vote, Vote!
Democratic legislators are trying to pass legislation to limit the damage caused by gun use. We have two posts (here) and (here) on actions to you can take to encourage your legislators and to remind them that their reelection depends on their votes. Make sure your relatives in red states call theirs as well.
(Note: You can add H.R. 4992 – 21 to Buy Act and H.R.3015 – Raise the Age Act to your lists when you talk to your legislators.)
The GOP, on the other hand, has devolved into an anti-democratic death cult centered around gun worship, vaccine and public health denial, White Supremacy, Christian Nationalism, misogyny, xenophobia, and generalized fearmongering. They are doing more than just voting “NO” on commonsense gun bills that the American public, including many gun owners, want passed. They are actively trying to inject lethal weaponry into lives of every American and make solving gun crimes more difficult.
Here are two bills (almost) exclusively promoted by the NRA-drunk GOP. This is why it is essential for everyone to vote them all out of office.
H.R.38 – Concealed guns for everyone!
H.R. 38, Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act: cosponsored by pretty much all the GOP legislators in the House and four Democrats who appear to have lost their minds – Rep. Sanford Bishop, Jr. [D-GA], Rep. Henry Cuellar [D-TX], Rep. Jared Golden [D-ME] and Vicente Gonzalez, (D-TX).
This bill is a big ol’ “good person with a gun” piece of nonsense, with a Texas-twist of lawsuits. (Access this short, but eye-opening video here)
According to the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions: “Weak open and concealed carry laws increase gun violence by 1) allowing individuals who have a history of acting violently to carry their firearms in public; 2) promoting a “shoot first” culture of violence; 3) encouraging armed intimidation by hate groups; and 4) complicateing law enforcement’s response to potential threats”.
This bill would allow any individual who is eligible to carry a concealed firearm in one state, to carry or possess a concealed handgun (other than a machine gun or destructive device) in any other state that permits concealed carry. This included those gun owners from 25 “Right To Carry” states who may have been convicted of violent misdemeanors (some of which may have originally been charged as felonies prior to a plea bargain), have multiple drunk driving violations, a history of multiple arrests, and those who had restraining orders for domestic violence issued against them. (Domestic violence is now recognized a significant precursor to mass shootings.)
These RTC states have made getting evidence to document how many violent crimes are committed by legal gun carriers or how many permit holders committing crimes had prior criminal convictions or restraining orders very difficult. However, Violence Policy Center (VPC) has documented that since May 2007, more than 1,000 people have died at the hands of persons who held concealed carry permits. These incidents include 31 mass shootings and the killings of 19 police officers.
What states could these people enter with their concealed weapons? All of them.
H.R. 38 would preempt most state and local laws related to concealed carry and establishes a private right of action for a person “adversely affected by interference with a concealed-carry right established by this bill”, meaning that any agent of a state could be sued for preventing them from carrying their guns into public places including national parks, national wildlife refuge areas, land managed by the BLM, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Forest Service.
Who then can say “NO” to guns? State or local governments can restrict them on their own property, as can private citizens. Which means restaurant workers who’ve had such fun telling unmasked assholes they can’t come on the premises during a plague that killed over a million Americans, will now get the opportunity to do the same thing for armed people.
H.R.6945 – No REGISTRY Act and other bills the GOP is concentrating on instead of useful things to stop mass shootings.
H.R.6945 – No Registry Act – This insane bill, currently supported by 66 legislators we are unfortunately supporting with our tax dollars, removes the requirement for federal firearms licensee (FFLs) that go out of business to deliver their firearm transaction records to the ATF. Further, the bill requires the ATF to DESTROY all out-of-business records it has collected from FFLs, including those members of the 1.2% of FFLs who supply 57% of the guns later traced to crimes.
Why is this bill dangerous? Crime gun tracing is a critical data source—it can help solve gun crimes and identify where the guns used in crimes are originating from, therefore preventing more crimes. The ATF gets more that 1000 requests a day from law enforcement agencies. In 2021, they completed an estimated 548,000 tracing requests, each taking 7-10 days to complete.
Why does tracing take so long? “The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association, has for years systematically blocked plans to modernize the agency’s paper-based weapons-tracing system with a searchable database. Therefore, records of gun sales going back decades are still stored in boxes. At the N.R.A.’s instigation, Congress limited the bureau’s budget and imposed crippling restrictions on the collection and use of gun-ownership data, including a ban on requiring basic inventories of weapons from gun dealers. It has limited unannounced inspections of gun dealers. Fifteen years ago, the N.R.A. successfully lobbied to make the director’s appointment subject to Senate confirmation — and has subsequently helped block all but one nominee from taking office.”
We can see a group of FFL’s going “out of business” temporarily to destroy huge numbers of ownership records. Instead of letting the track-record of deadly weapons disappear, we should be funding the ATF to levels necessary to do their job quickly, and pushing bills like H.R.3536 – Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act, which would require the ATF to establish and maintain an electronic, searchable database of records.
The GOP is obsessed with suppressing and destroying information as to the ownership of lethal weapons.
- H.R. 6817 – No Backdoor Gun Control Act would remove the category of “any other weapon” (lethal weapons capable of being concealed on a person) from the definition of firearm under the National Firearms Act and would require the Department of Justice to destroy any records relating to the registration of any other weapon not later than one year after the enactment of this bill. (EXCUSE US! WHY?)
- H.R. 1827/S.702 – Gun Owner Registration Information Protection Act – Stops federal funding of, or support for, state databases that list (1) firearms lawfully owned or possessed by individuals, or (2) individuals who lawfully own or possess firearms.
- H.R. 6950 – No Gun Lists Act – Would require the require the ATF to eliminate its Enterprise Content Management Imaging Repository System or any similar system which contains information on guns. (This basically says that the ATF cannot keep records of guns)
- H.R. – Gun Owner Privacy Act – (This is the kind of bill Marjorie Taylor Greene creates when she’s not doing bonkers videos) Her bill would prohibits the use of federal funds for a firearms-related background check system that does not immediately destroy all information about a person who is eligible to own firearms, or the implementation or collection of a tax or fee in connection with a firearms-related background check.
And they are serious about allowing guns on campus.
- H.R. 7415 – Safe Students Act – repeals provisions of federal criminal law that prohibit the possession or discharge of a firearm in a school zone.
- H.R.7908 – PASS Act – To amend the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 to permit qualified law enforcement officers, qualified retired law enforcement officers, and persons not prohibited by State law from carrying a concealed firearm to carry a firearm, and to discharge a firearm in defense of self or others, in a school zone.
INDIVISIBLE VENTURA 