A common sense gun bill
Published December 8, 2017
Editorial by Winston-Salem Journal, December 3, 2017.
Sen. Thom Tillis has co-sponsored a bipartisan bill that introduces reasonable gun-control to address situations like November’s Texas church shooting. The bill is a good start that just might get through.
The Fix NICS Act would ensure “federal and state authorities comply with existing law and accurately report relevant criminal history records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).” The bill would penalize federal agencies that fail to properly report relevant records and provides incentives for states to improve their overall reporting.
After the horrifying church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, it was discovered that the shooter had been court-martialed for a domestic violence incident. The Air Force failed to enter the court-martial into a federal database as the law required, The Associated Press reported. That might have blocked him from buying the rifle he used to kill 26 people.
“The Fix NICS Act … strikes the right balance between addressing legitimate public safety concerns and protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans,” Tillis said in a press release. “The legislation will ensure that state and federal agencies follow our existing laws and that the national background check system receives the information necessary to prevent firearms from falling into the wrong hands.”
“It’s no secret that I believe much more needs to be done,” one of the other cosponsors, Chris Murphy (D-CT), said in the release. “But this bill will make sure that thousands of dangerous people are prevented from buying guns. It represents the strongest update to the background checks system in a decade, and provides the foundation for more compromise in the future.”
Other cosponsors include Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX), Tim Scott (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
The legislation has been endorsed by such disparate groups as the National Rifle Association of America, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the National Domestic Violence Hotline, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the National Sheriffs Association.
If that’s not a bipartisan miracle, we don’t know what is. Kudos to Tillis and his colleagues for working across the aisle to seek a practical solution to this very real problem. This is a good start.
