Fact Checker: The NRA’s love-hate relationship with a database for background checks
Democracy Dies in Darkness The truth behind the rhetoric The NRA’s love-hate relationship with a database for background checks After the high school shooting in Parkland, Fla., NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch was on TV lamenting that states don’t send all the required criminal and mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Because of these gaps, she said, many people legally barred from buying guns can get them anyway. “It’s not federally mandated,” she said on CNN. “Politicians could change this today; they could change it tomorrow,” she said on ABC News. We did some digging and found that politicians did try to change this, 25 years ago, with a federal mandate. And they were blocked — largely by the NRA. The group funded several lawsuits challenging the Brady gun law, which created the NICS, and filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court arguing that the entire law...