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by WorldTribune Staff, February 19, 2019
Democrats are pushing hard for tougher gun control laws – except, apparently, when illegal immigrants are involved.
Last week, H.R. 8, named the The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, passed the House Judiciary Committee on a 23-15 party-line vote. The legislation requires background checks for essentially all sales and transfers of firearms.
Democrats shot down Republican-led efforts to amend the legislation to include alerting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when illegal immigrants fail those background checks.
Rep. Matt Gaetz, Florida Repubilcan, tweeted on Feb. 13: “Democrats in the Judiciary Committee just voted against notifying ICE when an illegal alien fails a background check to buy a gun. They hate ICE so much that they’d keep ICE in the dark when illegals try to get guns!”
Gaetz attached to his tweet a copy of an amendment to H.R. 8 which would require that law enforcement agencies be notified if any individual failed a National Instant Criminal Background Check System check ahead of a firearms purchase.
Those agencies would include the nearest FBI field office, state and local law enforcement agencies with jurisdiction over the would-be buyer, and, according to the amendment submitted by Republican Florida Rep. Greg Steube, “(i)n the case of an alien illegally or unlawfully in the United States, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”
Steube’s amendment borrowed the language from a Democratic proposal known as the “Unlawful Gun Buyer Alert Act”, but Democrats who had supported that proposal voted against Steube’s amendment.
“Clearly, the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee don’t care about preventing gun violence, they simply are playing politics with Americans’ Second Amendment rights,” Steube told Florida Daily. “The fact that Democrats do not want law enforcement notified if an individual attempting to purchase a firearm fails a background check is truly troubling.”
Steube added: “In rejecting this amendment, the Democrats have shown their true colors. It is clear they are not interested in preventing gun violence or stopping the illegal purchase of firearms, but rather they are only interested in limiting the rights of law abiding citizens (in order) to advance their own political agenda.”
Steube, who represents Florida’s 17th Congressional District, said that the bill under consideration by the Democratic-controlled House would have done nothing to prevent several recent mass shootings in the state – such as the 2018 Parkland high school shooting or the 2016 massacre at an Orlando nightclub – as those shooters had passed the already existing background check system and had purchased their firearms legally.
“H.R. 8 will do absolutely nothing to prevent gun violence in Florida or around the country,” Steube said. “Instead, it will only restrict the rights of the millions of law abiding citizens that legally carry a firearm every day.”
While the legislation may pass the full House, it stands little chance of passage in the GOP-controlled Senate.