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The House passed a bill on background checks that would give federal authorities more time to check the antecedents of gun buyers. The bill is likely to be passed in the Senate.
Andy Clement / Getty Images
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Andy Clement / Getty Images
The House passed a bill on background checks that would give federal authorities more time to check the antecedents of gun buyers. The bill is likely to be passed in the Senate.
Andy Clement / Getty Images
The Democrats-led House on Thursday approved another bill to expand federal gun control legislation. The bill gives the FBI more time to check the antecedents of gun buyers. A day after the House passed a bill extending controls to private firearms sales.
Both measures are likely to be adopted.
The last bill would extend the sellers' time wait before concluding a gun sale. Like Wednesday's measure, he largely followed party lines – 228-198.
Thursday's bill seeks to remove the so-called "Charleston escape" that allowed a white supremacist to buy a firearm used to kill 9 parishioners at Mother Emanuel AME in Charleston. S.C., in 2015.
At present, a gun salesman has to wait three companies for the federal investigators to check his background. Most checks are quick, but incomplete data can sometimes result in a delayed response. If the delay lasts more than three working days, the sale of firearms may advance.
The improved law on background checks of 2019 extends the background check period to ten days, with the possibility of an extension of ten additional days.
Critics of the current system claim that the Charleston shooter was prevented from obtaining the weapon if the investigators had had more time to search his file and discover his arrest.
But the gun groups point out that the shooter had had the weapon for two months before committing his crime. They said that they had more time than the authorities to complete the check and order the confiscation of his recently purchased weapon.
An internal investigation by the FBI and a judge of the Federal Court criticized the background checkers in this case for failing to follow up on their investigations.
As NPR reported in 2017, the gunman was convicted and sentenced to death.
Before the last passage, the representative James Clyburn, DS.C., Whip's majority in the House, paid tribute to the widow and daughters of Reverend Clementa Pinckney, one of the victims of the 2015 massacre, sitting in the House.
He added that the moment the authorities discovered that the shooter should have been ineligible for the fire was "it was too late".
"As a result, these poor souls lost their lives," said Clyburn. "Let's give the FBI, give the authorities enough time to do their job, we'll save lives."
Most Republicans in the House did not support the legislation, including Representative Doug Collins, R-Ga.
He added that an extension of the waiting period before receiving a firearm could put the victims of abuse or those seeking to defend their family more in danger.
"This bill will empower abusers and violent predators by making their victims more vulnerable," Collins said. "It will do nothing to make our communities safer, but it will make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to exercise their second-amendment rights."
An amendment to give federal auditors access to a larger criminal database called the National Data Exchange has not been sufficiently supported and has been withdrawn. Proponents of this idea claim that it would fill the information gap in the National System for Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS).
Neither Thursday's bill nor Wednesday's bill, dubbed the 2019 Bipartite Background Verification Act, is expected to garner significant support in the Republican-controlled Senate.
The White House said it would veto bills in the unlikely event that one of them would reach President Trump's office.
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