And I suppose that is where I am getting confused on the position that you are taking here.
It seems to me that we already have more than enough laws on the books covering gun control, too many in fact. Do we not just need to enforce the laws we currently have instead of spending time passing more?
My point is that this is exactly what this bill is about - enforcing the laws we currently have. It's already illegal for a wife-beater, or a person that the courts have found to be mentally ill and a danger to himself or others, to buy and own a gun, and it's also illegal for anyone to sell a gun to such a person.
This bill does not expand the scope of who is and isn't allowed to have a gun, it is designed to capture the information about existing "prohibited persons," as they're called, that is currently not consistently included in the NICS database.
If you have a philosophical objection to the very concept of background checks being required in order to buy a gun in order to screen out criminals, abusers, and the mentally ill, then that's fine, but if wishes were rifles the beggars would shoot, so to speak.
Gun-control laws are immoral and should be repealed, not enforced. Gun-control hinders the ability of individuals to defend themselves and makes criminals out of people who aren't criminals. With the stroke of a pen politicians can turn hundreds of thousands of people into felons simply because they own a certain kind of gun.