Nix the National Instant Criminal Background Check System

Lets Nix NICS.
By Alan Chwick, Richard Goldman & Joanne Eisen

New York –-(Ammoland.com)- History has proven over and over that criminals will always get their hands on guns, regardless of the laws that are passed by politicians.

History also shows that government can never control the black markets which supply these weapons to individuals intent on breaking the law.

That’s why they’re criminals, because they have no trouble violating our laws.

For these reasons, logic tells us that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) will never work to control crime in America, even if it is expanded to become “universal“. The very nature of how criminals obtain firearms in a country with well over 200 million guns in private hands guarantees that NICS can never keep firearms out of criminal hands. Instead, all NICS does is make it more difficult, and sometimes impossible, for law-abiding citizens to exercise their constitutional right to own and use firearms for all lawful purposes.

Some might speculate that this is the true intention of the big government liberals who created the NICS system.

If a simple background check could actually eliminate the threat of gun-toting criminals terrorizing our population, perhaps the inconvenience to gun owners might be worth it. However, it really isn’t about the check system at all, and it never has been. What’s really going on is a continuing attempt by the anti-gun establishment to set up a system of invisible registration, which students of history recognize clearly is the first step in the path towards civilian disarmament.

The NICS system is a major part of this long-term plan, because the data gathered from NICS creates the database of gun owners which some future [or current] administration might choose to use for firearm confiscation. History proves this repeatedly beyond any shadow of doubt. You’re not being paranoid, as someone really is out to get you. Since the 1960’s, the liberal elite in America, using their “useful idiots” in the media, has been slowly pushing an anti-firearm, anti-self-defense narrative that will, if not resisted, inevitably lead to blaming law-abiding gun owners for America’s crime epidemic.

The first step is always the same, the creation of a LIST. Whether it be Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Mao’s Communist China, or even New York State, it always begins innocently with a LIST.

Remember what rabid anti-gun NY Governor Andrew Cuomo said in December 2012, that “confiscation could be an option.” But first, of course, he’d need a LIST.

When NICS first became operative, many people realized that it’s information could be used to create a central registry of gun owners by simply preserving the data from each gun transaction. This forced the NRA to engage in a series of failed court battles to mandate the destruction of gun check data after the transaction was approved or denied. Luckily, despite the loss in court, Congress overruled NICS’s decision to preserve gun check data beyond the initial transaction by passing the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004. This prohibition continues to impose restrictions in NICS today, by refusing to allow the expenditure of Federal funds for such a back door registration system. (see: The NICS 24 Hour Destruct Requirement, https://www.reginfo.gov).

With any new “universal check law”, we could see a repeat of the attempt to compile the “disarmament lists”. Our opponents on the left will say, “Don’t worry, there’ll be no lists”, a lie we must NEVER believe. As NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre said on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace on February 3, 2013, “I think what they’ll do is they’ll turn this universal check on the law-abiding into a universal registry of law-abiding people.”

The language of any new law would be critical, and would require close and constant scrutiny. We must never be lulled into thinking that the intent of the proposed “national universal check system” is lofty and benign, with public safety as the goal. That is most certainly not the case! The goal is to register owners of guns, for confiscation when the time suits the leftist elite.

Even if the new ‘universal‘ NICS were to be kept cleansed of records, we would always have to remain vigilant to assure that future bureaucrats did not surreptitiously begin to store the data in government (or private) computers. Never forget that the intent of supporters of big government remains to disarm and fully control “the people”.

Existing NICS lists, just like the Watch Lists used by TSA at the airports, have always had “holes” in them, errors that remain almost uncorrectable, which cause innocent, law-abiding citizens much grief and aggravation in dealing with agents who are simply “going by the rules”. Furthermore, such lists, by law, can never be complete, because privacy laws like HIPPA may actually serve to protect mentally ill individuals from being listed on NICS.

Disturbed persons protected by medical privacy laws would need to commit a crime to find their way onto NICS system lists, which often doesn’t happen until it is too late.

However, these check lists CAN be expanded in other ways, and could still trap law-abiding citizens. The Lautenberg Amendment is a case in point. Non-felons were added onto the NICS lists via the law’s ex post facto language. We accepted the injustices that were done to fellow gun owners, and we looked away while the government used the unconstitutional ex post facto portion of the law, because we were told that it would improve public safety. But NICS is NOT about public safety. It’s just part of the slow squeeze of the gun owner pool.

States like New York maintain lists of users and prescribers of prescription drugs. It would be very easy for the Federal authorities by administrative regulation to use these lists as an adjunct to the NICS check. But who would decide when a user of a prescription drug should be deprived of his constitutional right to own a firearm? Would a patient on serious psychiatric medications qualify? Would a patient on headache medication qualify? Would a patient on blood pressure medication qualify, if there might be a remote chance that there might be slight impairment if taken in excess. The recent case of the LAPD officer who embarked upon a killing spree should bring home the point that, regardless of the vetting one receives, anyone can snap. Do we leave our population defenseless against criminals because one individual may randomly go berserk? Or do we create programs to help the mentally ill before they reach a crisis, while also preserving the right of every law-abiding individual to protect themselves, if they so choose, if the “stuff” hits the fan?

Citizens are not rushing to gun shops to buy guns because they think they will always be able to obtain them. They are buying them because they know that they may not be able to get them in the future, if America continues on the track that our cousins in Canada, England and Australia have followed.

We must not allow ourselves to be branded as dangers to society by inclusion on an unchangeable NICS/ registration/confiscation list by unaccountable bureaucrats, in the name of “safety”.

This is not about background checks. It’s not about reasonableness and cooperation. It’s not about safety, and it’s got nothing to do with “the children”. It is about a long-term, left-wing plan to create a ‘universal‘ checking system that will not work as promised, but which will work as they intend it to, to open the way for confiscation.

There is a tremendous, hysterical, seemingly unstoppable push to expand the NICS system in our country as quickly as possible, as if this act alone will save us all immediately from future madmen. Deceitful, opportunistic politicians like Governor Andrew Cuomo have used the aftermath of the Sandy Hook tragedy to successfully (so far) deprive law-abiding citizens of their constitutional rights. Some misinformed Americans actually believe that chaos will certainly reign over the land if the NICS is not expanded ASAP.

Wiser minds remember the warning of Benjamin Franklin, who famously said “those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

In truth, all that will be lost if a “Universal NICS” isn’t created is the opportunity for the leftist political elite to further erode our god-given rights by creating a national database of gun buyers, gun owners, and perhaps, gun-owning opponents of a future confiscation.

We jointly say to our fellow law-abiding gun owners that America should “NIX NICS”, and be ever vigilant and always wary of this system and its successors.

About the Authors:
Mr. Alan J. Chwick,  is currently the Managing Coach of the Freeport Junior Club (FJC), at the Freeport NY Revolver & Rifle Association. Additionally, he has been involved with firearms much of his life, and is extremely active in the Second Amendment, of the U.S. Bill of Rights, political arena in Nassau County and the State of New York. He is responsible, with the aid of a knowledgeable lawyer, Mr. Robert Firriolo, for changing the face of Preemption, for NYS Penal Code 400, in NYS with his case win against Nassau County (Citation: Chwick v. Mulvey, 81 A.D.3d 161, 915 N.Y.S.2d 578 (2nd Dept. 2010)), and was a strong element in the changing of NYS PL 265.20.7e, permitting 14-20 year olds to handle a firearm.

Dr. Joanne D. Eisen received her B.A. from Queens College, City University of New York, in Chemistry/Biology. She earned her D.D.S. degree from New York University in 1966. Since 1966, Joanne has been engaged full-time in the private practice of dentistry in Old Bethpage, New York.

Dr. Richard B. Goldman earned a B.S. in Geology from the State University of New York at Albany in 1974, and a D.D.S. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1981. He has practiced dentistry for over 30 years, and is presently Vice President for Clinical Products for a major dental manufacturing company. He maintains life memberships in many national and state gun rights organizations, and has spent many years educating all who will listen about the relationship between civilian disarmament and government-sponsored genocide.

The current primary focus of the writers’ research is the importance of the Second Amendment to the preservation of our American Constitutional liberties.

To contact the authors:

• Dr. Eisen – [email protected]
• Mr. Chwick – [email protected]
• Dr. Goldman – [email protected]