GUN ACTIVIST SAYS HE PERSONALLY MADE BACKGROUND CHECK BILL TOOTHLESS

When I first saw the headline of this story, I misinterpreted what was going on:

Gun rights group endorses background check deal

A large alliance of gun owners announced Sunday it supports the bipartisan compromise on gun sale background checks that senators announced last week.

...



The group is the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, chaired by a guy named Alan Gottlieb. I assumed he'd just committed career suicide by endorsing this bill -- which seemed odd, given his long history of pro-gun activism and the fact that he's the author of books with titles such as Black & Blue: How Obama and the Democrats Are Beating Up the Constitution and Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns.

But a right-wing blogger has published a video in which Gottlieb boasts about gutting the bill on behalf of the pro-gun side.





The transcript is at the link directly above. Here's part of what Gottlieb says about the bill:

... The Manchin-Toomey Bill despite some of my colleagues in the Gun Rights Movement talking about that it's registration, it is not registration. Ahhh .. To be perfectly candid about it, it states in it that no guns can be registered. It also carries a section in it that any federal or any state or any gun dealer with access to the NICS Check Records who misuses those records for registration purposes commits a felony with a 15 year ... up to a 15 year prison term. That's really great protection for us....

It gives protection, if you do go through the background check, you as an individual will now get both civil and criminal liability protection that you don't have now. If somebody sold a gun to somebody who's misused it, nobody can sue you even in a civil court for damages. That's great protection that you don't have right now.

... a lot of Veterans are being disarmed so to speak once they come back from combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and all of a sudden because they were out processed and had stress problems the VA now puts their name into the NICS system they can't own a gun, this new bill, this Background Check Bill has a provision in it to eradicate that. Their Rights will be restored.

... It gives you more protection so that you can take your gun from state to state than you have now.

Another important one, you cannot now legally buy a handgun in a state that you don't live in. If you're not a resident of the state you can't buy a handgun. Under the so-call "Background CHeck Bill," you'll be able to buy a handgun in all 50 states, as long as you buy it from a licensed dealer you can buy it from anywhere you want....

There's a Million other things in there it's a Christmas Tree. We just hung a Million Ornaments on it. We're taking the Background Check and making it a pro-gun bill....

Gottlieb's role in writing the bill was reported by The Seattle Times in February. (He says in the video that "this will probably break on Monday in The Wall Street Journal, but the story he was anticipating has been posted, and it quotes him only briefly.)

Well, this is what happens to every gun bill at the hands of gun lobbyists -- and then the people who tailor the language so the bills don't accomplish anything turn around and say, "See? Gun control doesn't work." I'm doubtful at this point that the bill is even worth supporting.