Thursday, February 7, 2013

HR 431

I don't see this one listed in my original post of January 16th, Gun Bills in the House of Representatives of the United States

 Full Text of H.R. 431: Gun Transparency and Accountability (Gun TRAC) Act of 2013 - GovTrack.us
A BILL

To restore certain authorities of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to administer the firearms laws, and for other purposes.

    Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

    This Act may be cited as the ‘Gun Transparency and Accountability (Gun TRAC) Act of 2013’.

SEC. 2. USE OF FIREARM TRACE INFORMATION IN CIVIL PROCEEDINGS.

    Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the contents of the Firearms Trace System database maintained by the National Trace Center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shall not be immune from legal process, shall be subject to subpoena or other discovery, shall be admissible as evidence, and may be used, relied on, or disclosed in any manner, and testimony or other evidence may be permitted based on the data, on the same basis as other information, in a civil action in any State (including the District of Columbia) or Federal court or in an administrative proceeding.

SEC. 3. REQUIREMENT TO PRESERVE INSTANT CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECK RECORDS FOR 90 DAYS.

    (a) In General- Section 922(t)(2)(C) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting ‘after the 90-day period that begins with the date the system complies with subparagraphs (A) and (B),’ before ‘destroy’.

    (b) Conforming Amendment- Section 511 of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 (18 U.S.C. 922 note; Public Law 112-55; 125 Stat. 632) is amended--

        (1) by striking ‘for--’ and all that follows through ‘(1)’; and

        (2) by striking the semicolon and all that follows and inserting a period.

SEC. 4. ELIMINATION OF LIMITATION ON IMPOSITION OF REQUIREMENT THAT FIREARMS DEALERS TO CONDUCT PHYSICAL CHECK OF FIREARMS INVENTORY.

    The matter under the heading ‘Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives--Salaries and Expenses’ in title I of division B of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012 (18 U.S.C. 923 note; Public Law 112-55; 125 Stat. 609-610) is amended by striking the 7th proviso.

SEC. 5. INCREASED PENALTIES FOR WILLFUL NONCOMPLIANCE WITH FIREARM LICENSEE INVENTORY REPORTING ORDER.

    Section 924(a) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:

        ‘(8) Notwithstanding the preceding provisions of this subsection, a person licensed under this chapter who willfully violates an inventory reporting order issued under section 923(g)(1) shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.’.

SEC. 6. INELIGIBILITY FOR FEDERAL FIREARMS LICENSE OF PERSON WHOSE FIREARMS LICENSE HAS BEEN REVOKED.

    Section 923(a) of title 18, United States Code, is amended by inserting after the 1st sentence the following: ‘The Attorney General may not accept such an application from a person whose license issued under this chapter has been revoked.’.
I find sections 2 and 3 to be particularly problematic. I need more details before forming an opinion on section 4, and sections 5 and 6 sound reasonable, but I find any suggestion of giving the ATFEIEIO more authority to be suspect.

If you look any of these bills up, you'll notice that they are only co-sponsored by Democrats...

2 comments:

Sailorcurt said...

Section 4 refers to a funding document. Several specific functions of ATF are defunded by this law as a result of their abuse of their authority in regard to those functions. The seventh "proviso" is:

"That no funds made available by this or any other Act shall be expended to promulgate or implement any rule requiring a physical inventory of any business licensed under section 923 of title 18, United States Code"

I'm not sure what particular abuse prompted the prohibitions on physical inventories, but I'm sure there was good reason for it.

The problem with section 5 is that "willful noncompliance" can mean anything from failing to enter firearms into the "bound book" to "allowing" a customer to enter an abbreviation like "blvd." on their 4473 form. As far as the AFT is concerned ANY "noncompliance" is willful.

The problem with section 5 is that the ONLY tool the ATF currently has to deal with infractions, regardless of how minor, is to revoke licenses.

This means that the aforementioned "willful noncompliance" of having abbreviations on 4473's or in a bound book entry could easily mean that the FFL holder is forever prevented from ever attaining an FFL again, even if actions were taken to address the grievous offense and prevent it from happening again.

"When you're only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail."

This is just bad legislation all around. We need to be working to curb the abuses of the ATF, not giving them permission to perpetrate more.

Drang said...

Ahhh, now ISTR that there was talk of reforming the rules so that, among other things, silly crap like using an abbreviation on a 4473 would not result in an ATF raid, and that there other options than revocation of license less serious infractions. Wondering if this is some sort of counter-move.