Support H.R. 2640, the "NICS Improvement Act"

Gun owners' organizations such as the National Rifle Association have long supported instant background checks to screen potentially dangerous gun buyers, without burdening law-abiding citizens.  The new version of the "NICS Improvement Act" (H.R. 2640) would improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System by ensuring that relevant federal and state records are available for use by NICS. 

H.R. 2640 would also allow some people now unfairly prohibited from owning guns to have their rights restored, and to have their names removed from the instant check system.  Criminal records can be expunged or pardoned, but mental records currently cannot.  H.R. 2640 would require agencies to remove records of people who have been found no longer to suffer from mental illness, and those people would have their firearms rights restored.

Like previous versions of the NICS Improvement Act, H.R. 2640 makes other important changes that will improve the background check system and protect gun owners' rights:

*       H.R. 2640 requires removal of expired, incorrect or otherwise irrelevant records from NICS.  Today, totally innocent people (such as individuals with arrest records, who were never convicted any crime) are sometimes subject to delayed or denied firearm purchases because of incomplete records in the system.

*       H.R. 2640 prohibits federal fees for NICS checks.  Under current law, only annual appropriations riders prohibit the FBI from trying to impose fees by regulation (as the Clinton Administration proposed in 1998). 

At the same time it strengthens background checks against those mentally ill people who may be dangerous, H.R. 2640 does not affect the rights of any law-abiding person who has received voluntary mental health care.  Current law only prohibits gun possession by people who have been "adjudicated as a mental defective" or "committed to any mental institution," and regulations issued by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives specifically exclude voluntary treatment from that definition.

H.R. 2640 is a fair compromise that would improve the background check system, but not at the expense of Second Amendment rights.  The National Rifle Association respectfully asks you to support it.  If you have any questions about this legislation, please contact NRA Federal Affairs at (202) 651-2560.

The National Rifle Association Respectfully Urges You to

Vote "Yes" on H.R. 2640