Gun Owners of America issued a statement a short time ago regarding the two bills being advanced by the House of Representatives at the moment. Those are the national reciprocity bill and the bill designed to shore up the NICS system that may have been at least partially responsible for Sutherland Springs.

GOA is, unsurprisingly, supportive of reciprocity, but they’re less than thrilled with the changes to the NICS.

STATEMENT: GOA Applauds Passage of H.R. 38, Condemns H.R. 4477

Springfield, VA – Executive Director of Gun Owners of America (GOA) Erich Pratt made the following statement after the House Judiciary Committee’s actions on concealed carry reciprocity and background check legislation:

“Over 1.5 million law-abiding Americans who make up Gun Owners of America commend the House Judiciary Committee for reporting H.R. 38, the concealed carry reciprocity bill.

“GOA applauds the committee passage of H.R. 38 and encourages the House leadership to take up the bill right away. This legislation will allow decent Americans to carry in any state in the country with confidence that they would not become entrapped by the fascist gun laws of anti-gun states.

“GOA also sends special kudos to Republicans on the Judiciary Committee who shot down an attempt by Democrats to delete the Constitutional Carry protections in the bill.  Gun Owners of America opposed the amendment that sought to only limit concealed carry reciprocity to permit holders and was happy to see that provision go down to an inglorious defeat.

“Finally, Gun Owners of America condemns the committee’s approval of the ‘Traffic Ticket Gun Ban’ (H.R. 4477).  This deceptive legislation would add hundreds of thousands of additional names into the NICS system, thus blocking thousands of lawful gun owners from purchasing guns for offenses as slight as unpaid traffic tickets. Not only that, it would lay the groundwork for an anti-gun administration to troll every government health and welfare program for the purpose of imposing gun bans on recipients with PTSD, ADHD, and Alzheimer’s — the latter would jeopardize the inheritance of many valuable gun collections.  The Obama administration already tried to do this with Social Security disability.  In the future, there may not be a pro-gun Congress to disapprove similar moves or a pro-gun president to sign it.”

Erich Pratt, or another GOA spokesmen, is available for interviews. Gun Owners of America is a nonprofit lobbying organization dedicated to protecting the right to keep and bear arms without compromise. GOA represents over 1.5 million members and activists. For more information, visit GOA’s Newsroom. 

Now, the GOA’s charges against HR 4477 are pretty serious, and if that’s an accurate assessment, then yeah, there’s a problem.

No one takes issue with taking steps necessary to prevent a spousal abuser like the Sutherland Springs killer from getting a gun despite being a prohibited individual, but there’s a far cry between domestic violence and, to use GOA’s example, unpaid parking tickets. The mental health examples are also problematic. People suffering from PTSD and ADHD are rarely adjudicated as mentally defective, thus shouldn’t be barred from purchasing firearms. They shouldn’t show up in the NICS for those conditions by any stretch.

This means that Republicans in the house need to take a step back and make sure there is no language in these bills that will let this happen. There’s no excuse for people like these to have concerns about whether they’ll lose their Second Amendment rights over such things.