History of background checks.

Gun control advocates want to eliminate privately owned guns. Their first goal is to slow down gun purchases, then to have guns registered and then to have them confiscated.

History of Background Checks

Until 1988, when gun control supporters started calling for a ban on “assault weapons,” they had tried to get a ban on handguns.[30]In 1976, the anti-gun group now known as the Brady Campaign described handgun registration as the second step in a three-step plan to prohibit the private possession of handguns.[31] The first part of its plan was to slow down handgun sales, and for many years it hoped to do so by having handgun purchases subjected to a waiting period and other restrictions.

For example, legislation introduced in Congress by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and the late Rep. Peter Rodino (D-N.J.) proposed a 21-day waiting period on purchases of handguns from dealers, limiting handgun purchases to two per year, requiring a permit to acquire a handgun from a dealer, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of handguns not deemed suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes, and imposing a $500 annual licensing fee on dealers who sold handguns.[32]

In the 1980s, when the Brady Campaign was known as Handgun Control, Inc., it continued to support waiting period legislation to slow down handgun sales, and opposed the establishment of NICS.[33] In 1993, Congress approved the Brady Act, which imposed a waiting period of up to five days on handgun purchases from dealers until November 30, 1998, at which time it required NICS checks for all firearms sold by dealers. Gun control supporters opposed the NICS provision.

Once NICS was inevitable, gun control supporters began advocating steps aimed at incrementally transforming it into a national registry of guns, something they’ve wanted for more than a century.[34] At first, they wanted background checks on all private (i.e., non-licensee) sales, trades and gifts of handguns.[35] Then they wanted background checks on private transfers of all guns at gun shows.[36]

In 1996, a tiny group that still advocates banning handguns and other categories of firearms claimed that gun shows were a “favored venue” for criminals seeking to acquire guns.[37] To drive gun shows out of business, the group proposed that sales of handguns and “assault weapons” (which together account for the majority of guns sold at shows and elsewhere) and firearms regulated under the National Firearms Act be prohibited at shows.[38]

By the time that NICS became operational in November 1998, gun control supporters had realized that, through a series of steps, they might be able to use the system to achieve gun registration. In 1999, the late-Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), a longtime gun control supporter, introduced legislation to require a NICS check on anyone who bought a gun at a gun show.[39] In 2009, Lautenberg proposed that the FBI retain, indefinitely, records of people who pass NICS checks to acquire guns.[40]

Since December 2012, gun control supporters have “demanded”[41] background checks on all private transfers of all firearms, regardless of location. And in 2013, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to eliminate the requirement that the FBI destroy the records of approved NICS checks within 24 hours.[xlii]Also in 2013, the Department of Justice said that background checks on all firearm transfers “depends on . . . requiring gun registration.”[xliii]NICS would become a registry of firearm transfers if all firearms transfers were subject to NICS checks and the FBI retained records of approved checks indefinitely, both of which gun control supporters have proposed, and such records included information currently maintained on federal Form 4473, documenting the identity of the firearm purchaser and the make, model and serial number of the firearm transferred. Over time, as people sell or bequeath their firearms, a registry of firearm transfers would become a registry of firearms possessed.