Democrats, NRA Reach Deal on Background-Check Bill, by J. Weisman for WPost

[applegrove]

Democrats, NRA Reach Deal on Background-Check Bill

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 10, 2007; Page A02

Senior Democrats have reached agreement with the National Rifle Association on what could be the first federal gun-control legislation since 1994, a measure to significantly strengthen the national system that checks the backgrounds of gun buyers.

The sensitive talks began in April, days after a mentally ill gunman killed 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech University. The shooter, Seung Hui Cho, had been judicially ordered to submit to a psychiatric evaluation, which should have disqualified him from buying handguns. But the state of Virginia never forwarded that information to the federal National Instant Check System (NICS), and the massacre exposed a loophole in the 13-year-old background-check program.

Under the agreement, participating states would be given monetary enticements for the first time to keep the federal background database up to date, as well as penalties for failing to comply.

To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks. Individuals with minor infractions in their pasts could petition their states to have their names removed from the federal database, and about 83,000 military veterans, put into the system by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2000 for alleged mental health reasons, would have a chance to clean their records. The federal government would be permanently barred from charging gun buyers or sellers a fee for their background checks. In addition, faulty records such as duplicative names or expunged convictions would have to be scrubbed from the database.

.....SNIP"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060901080.html?hpid=topnews

[GreenInNC]

1. Why?

Why are Dems making deals with the NRA? We are in charge.

[applegrove]

2. Perhaps they are actually trying to show they can govern. In the USA

gun rights is almost a centrist issue. I don't know why. Maybe the myth of the American West or GOP trying to build it up as a wedge issue. But even Kerry had to go hunting during his election campaign to win over some voters.

Like I said..I don't know why you are so different than Canada on the gun issue. Or Europe for that matter. But you just are.