Universal Background Checks Blocked In Nevada
BY Herschel Smith
7 years, 10 months ago
The expansion of gun background checks approved by Nevada voters last month will not happen as expected, based on an opinion released Wednesday by the Nevada Attorney General’s Office.
Ballot Question 1 requires that private party gun transfers – with a few exceptions – be subject to a federal background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System administered by the FBI.
The FBI sent a letter Dec. 14 to the state of Nevada’s Department of Public Safety saying it would not conduct these checks. The department asked for a legal opinion on the letter’s ramifications.
Because the text of the new Background Check Act says private-party transfers and sales must be done through the FBI background check system, the Nevada Attorney General’s Office opinion states, “citizens may not be prosecuted for their inability to comply with the Act unless and until the FBI changes its public position and agrees to conduct the background checks consistent with the Act.”
In a statement, the attorney general’s office said, “without this central feature (the FBI background check), the Background Check Act cannot commence.”
The main reason given by the FBI for why it would not conduct the check is that “the recent passage of the Nevada legislation regarding background checks for private sales cannot dictate how federal resources are applied.”
In other words, it would require additional staffing or resources at the FBI to handle the work arising from Nevada’s expansion of background checks.
This is a surprising response from the FBI. I would have bet good money against this answer, but I suppose we should be thankful for small victories.
The whole thing was absurd anyway. Laws are not made at the ballot box by referendum. They are made in Congress and Senate, signed by the chief executive. George Soros and Gabby Giffords just didn’t want to try to do it that way. It’s way too complex, and stands a good chance of failing. It’s much easier to flood the state with dollars stolen from the smaller governments of the world as Soros and The Clinton Foundation topple them for oil.
Note to Soros and Clinton. Suck it. You’ll have to wait and try again another way.
On December 29, 2016 at 12:07 pm, Archer said:
The way I read it explained, Nevada is designated by the FBI as a “point-of-contact (POC) state” when it comes to NICS checks. This means that when a Nevada gun dealer runs the background check, they contact a state-level agency, who contacts the FBI. No dealer in Nevada contacts the FBI directly. (They do the same thing here in Oregon; sellers run background checks through the State Police, not the FBI.)
What the FBI is saying is that this new state law requiring NICS checks on private transfers does not change the federal POC designation. The FBI, therefore, would have to expend extra resources to run Nevada checks, which they are not by any means required to do.
None of that regulation-wrangling surprises me. What did surprise me was the NV AG’s determination, which was that because the law very specifically requires NICS checks through the FBI and the FBI is refusing to run them, that citizens won’t be prosecuted for violating the literally-impossible-to-follow law. I was expecting the AG to “interpret” the law to mean that citizens had to run private transfers through a licensed dealer, who would run the check through the state-level agency (and probably for a nominal fee).
No doubt Bloomberg and Everytown are still celebrating their “victory” (they DID get the law on the books, after all, and it’s not going anywhere), but the AG’s opinion that it’s unworkable and won’t be enforced is a definite silver lining.