NSSF Statement Regarding the Bipartisan Sportmen’s Act

NSSF_LogoNEWTOWN, Conn. — The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for the firearms and ammunition industry, today issued this statement regarding the Bipartisan Sportsmen’s Act, S. 2363, that earlier today, failed to garner the 60 votes needed to move towards final passage: NSSF understands why pro-sportsmen members from both sides of the aisle wanted an opportunity to vote on amendments unique to their respective states. That said, it is disheartening to see America’s longstanding tradition of bipartisanship on sportsmen’s issues sacrificed to the continued gridlock preventing meaningful bipartisan legislation. NSSF looks forward to working with the vast majority of Senators who continue to have an interest in passing this historic legislation on behalf of current and future generations of hunters.

About NSSF The National Shooting Sports Foundation is the trade association for the firearms industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and the shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of more than 10,000 manufacturers, distributors, firearms retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations and publishers. For more information, visit www.nssf.org.

Universal Background Checks

Expanding background checks? This system as it has long existed through NICS has never worked as the anti-gun establishment would have you believe it will. Less than one percent of all background checks ever done under the NICS have led to a purchase denial. Due to the lack of the ability of our enforcement agencies at the grass roots levels of our country to fund and feed the system, the current NICS database is only a fraction of what it would be if it functioned half as well as our anti-gun brothers and sisters believe it would. To say it is grossly underfunded at all levels may not fix the responsibility where it belongs…the fact is that it is under-appropriated at the federal level. States don’t fund it adequately at all and have no real incentive to do so.  A high percentage of States don’t report at all and in those that do, an overwhelming number of their local Governments do not. A system of background checks is only as good as the information that is fed into the database. Local Governments and Municipalities do not have the resources or funding to feed the system the kind of information that might give it some degree of effectiveness.  Additionally, there is a limited fusion effort across the country to solicit, consolidate and manage this information on State and Regional levels, so how is it that background checks with an inadequate database of information is supposed to make us safer? The greater reality is that most bad guys will never obtain a weapon through legal means anyway and the mentally ill aren’t always walking around in their fatigues displaying homicidal tendencies…hindsight is 20/20 and no background check is going to fix that…never did and never will. NICS is and has always been a broke system and the idea of universal background checks, while looking good to the uniformed (courtesy of our liberal media) as a broad stroke,  is really only good for checking one thing…the political block.

The Gun Debate

In the wake of all of the recently publicized mass killings, the debate should not be whether guns kill people or people kill people. Most of us do not believe that the most common tool of the trade is the problem anyway…but that is a matter of personal opinion. The question we should all be asking is this…What kind of maniacal movement is occurring in this country that so enthusiastically glorifies evil?