By Susan Duclos
A top lobbyist for the the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in an exclusive interview with The Daily Caller is expressing concerns about the gun legislation Harry Reid is trying to through the Senate, namely the universal background checks. They believe the current gun bill could threaten both privacy rights and civil liberties.
Calabrese — a privacy lobbyist — was first careful to note that the ACLU doesn’t strictly oppose universal background checks for gun purchases. “If you’re going to require a background check, we think it should be effective,” Calabrese explained.
“However, we also believe those checks have to be conducted in a way that protects privacy and civil liberties. So, in that regard, we think the current legislation, the current proposal on universal background checks raises two significant concerns,” he went on.
“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers. Under existing law, most information regarding an approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed within 90 days.”
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“[U]nfortunately, we have seen in the past that the creation of these types of records leads sometimes to the creation of government databases and collections of personal information on all of us,” Calabrese warned. “That’s not an inevitable result, but we have seen that happen in the past, certainly.”
“As we’ve seen with many large government databases, if you build it, they will come.”
That has been the sticking point and the argument Second Amendment supporters have been making this whole time.
While there is bipartisan public support for background checks to keep weapon out of the hands of the mentally ill, liberal Democrats want to take it a step further.
Schumer has been insisting on record keeping for all private gun sales, saying the files are needed to keep the system effective. That led to stalemated talks with conservative leader Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who says the data would lead to federal records on gun owners.
Reuters reports Republicans are pushing to "to eliminate a provision that would require the seller to keep a record of the transaction."
Record-keeping of the kind Senate liberals are trying to insert into the Senate gun bill, is prohibited by the 1986 Firearms Protection Act, which requires the FBI to destroy any record of a successful background check to protect the privacy of law abiding legal gun owners.
Keeping those records instead of having them destroyed after the national instant criminal background check, as Senate liberals want to do, is a a registry, to which history has taught us, is just a step away from governments creating their own national registry.
The latest polling shows near universal support for background checks but that a plurality of Americans believe the federal government could use information gleaned from expanded background checks to confiscate legally-owned firearms, according to a Quinnipiac survey released Thursday.
[Update] Heritage reminds readers :
Congress has attended carefully to the concern about a federal gun registry in the past. Thus, for example, section 103(i) of Public Law 103-159 (18 U.S.C. 922 note) regarding the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) provides:
No department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States may–
(1) require that any record or portion thereof generated by the system established under this section be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or political subdivision thereof; or(2) use the system established under this section to establish any system for the registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearm transactions or dispositions, except with respect to persons, prohibited by section 922(g) or (n) of title 18, United States Code, or State law, from receiving a firearm.
Liberals continue to attempt to conflate background checks with record-keeping of such information, when in reality they are two very different subjects.
