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In September, 2016 continued on its record breaking pace to become the year with the most gun sales ever.  September has maintained the pace from August. Both months broke records, but by a lower percentage than the rest of 2016.  The 2016 NICS checks are far ahead of those for 2015, the previous record holder. In 2015, the total NICS checks for the year were 23,141,970 .  In 2015, through September, they were 15,607,587 1,992,219 checks were done in September, 2016 making 19,872,694 checks done for 2016 so far.  2016 is about two months ahead of the 2015 record. ...

At this Sunday’s town-hall style presidential debate the public is able to vote for their favorite questions. The ABC News and CNN moderators plan on using the 30 questions that receive the most votes. Largely because of efforts by gun control organizations, the current top two questions are both on gun control. The first is, “Would you support requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales?” and the second is, "How will you ensure the 2nd amendment is protected?” By Sunday morning at this writing, those questions had received 73,844 and 64,041 votes, respectively, well ahead of the third-place question...

In less than two weeks, the Office of Personnel Management is expected to launch the new background investigation service to help fix the mess created by a series of incidents ranging from a lack of contractor oversight to the massive data breach affecting 21.5 million current and former federal employees. Officials promise the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) will be a much different organization than its predecessor, the Federal Investigative Services. “It will have a politically appointed director, will be headquartered in D.C. and be a full member of the Performance Accountability Council, so it aligns with customers for increased...

The number of gun-related background checks performed in July far exceeded those of any previous July, newly released numbers from the FBI show. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, processed nearly 2.2 million checks last month. That represents an increase of almost 600,000 checks over the previous record set last year. It is also an increase of more than a million checks over July 2011. The July record is the latest in a string of 15 record-setting months for firearm background checks. July also saw an increase over June’s numbers as the gun industry’s seasonal lull comes...

Nurses with convictions for crimes of violence, sexual offenses and drug thefts are able to evade detection in six states, which have far fewer protections in place than most states when it comes to licensing healthcare workers ... While candidates for jobs such as massage therapists or private investigators are required to submit a fingerprint for checks against state and FBI conviction records, the nurse licensing systems in Colorado, Wisconsin, New York, Vermont, Maine and Hawaii rely on self-disclosure and complaints. The porous process allows nurses disqualified from obtaining licensure in other states to obtain a license in one of...

Neil Steinberg of the Chicago Sun-Times decided last week to purchase an AR-15 following the Pulse night club shooting in Orlando, Florida. His purpose, he said, was to demonstrate how simple it was and to explore Illinois’ gun laws concerning assault weapons. When he bought the gun, Steinberg planned to sell it back to the store. However, his purchase was stopped by the gun store, which canceled the transaction during Illinois’ required 24-hour waiting period after discovering he had lied on his background check about his history of alcohol abuse and domestic violence. In his article, Steinberg admitted that while...

In 2016, Americans continue to break records for gun sales.  While the National Instant Check System (NICS) does not track gun sales directly, the numbers are highly correlated. The numbers of NICS checks, and the increase in private firearms, have skyrocketed during the Obama administration.The total for 2016 through the end of May is 11,698,006 instant checks. That is more than the entire year of 2007, which held the record up to that year. Thus, during the Obama years, the number of private firearm sales has doubled.  In 2015, the highest year on record, the total number of checks...

WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is blaming an exhaustive White House vetting process for the fact that the Obama administration has not yet named a person to run the U.S. Agency for International Development. Six months into the administration's tenure without having appointed someone to the agency's top spot, Clinton told USAID employees on Monday that several people had turned down the job due to overly burdensome financial and personal disclosure requirements that she called a "nightmare," "frustrating beyond words" and "ridiculous."

A Justice Department division will no longer refer to people released from prison as “felons” or “convicts” because of the stigmatizing effects of the terms, an agency official announced in a Washington Post editorial Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT Instead, Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason said the “disparaging labels” will be replaced by “person who committed a crime” or “individual who was incarcerated.” The new lexicon is set to be utilized in “speeches, solicitations, website content and social media posts” emanating from the Office of Justice Programs. “I have come to believe that we have a responsibility to reduce not only the physical...

To make public-sector jobs more accessible to convicts, President Obama has issued a new order prohibiting federal agencies from asking candidates about criminal history when applying for positions. It’s part of the commander-in-chief’s mission to reduce barriers to reentry and employment for incarcerated individuals once they leave jail. The new measure, announced in a Friday media dump, will affect tens of thousands of federal government positions funded with taxpayer dollars. Government often tries to escape fallout by burying controversial or bad news right before the weekend, but it’s difficult to keep this outrageous development below the radar. At the president’s...

California’s Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democratic lawmakers appear to be on a collision course over a new round of gun control measures. Newsom, claiming lawmakers are dragging their feet, is collecting thousands of signatures in pursuit of a gun initiative ballot measure in November. But lawmakers say they’re planning to address these issues via legislation, and the initiative could hurt what they’re doing. Critics also say the proposed California ballot initiative contains a wide variety of restrictive, costly and unreasonable gun and ammunition control measures. The proposed “Safety for All As of 2016” initiative has 600,000 signatures from...

It's easy to forget the cold, dark days of winter, 2013. The horrific tragedy of Newtown had touched the hearts of the nation, and every news outlet -- every one -- was blaming the Second Amendment community for what happened there. GOA was receiving death threats -- not only against us, but against our children. Even Fox News was opining that the battle against Bloomberg's gun control was hopeless, as every news outlet spent every hour of the day predicting that our organization -- and the "gun manufacturers' lobby" [sic] in general -- would be absolutely and totally destroyed. It...

On February 24 New York Times op-ed contributors Abner Mikva and Lawrence Rosenthal argued that it is time to register all guns and license all gun owners; background checks are not enough. Moreover, the authors suggested such licensing and registration would not violate the Second Amendment. According to the NYT op-ed, background checks are not sufficient, there are too many ways to go around them. “A more effective system would require everyone who owns or acquires a gun to register it.” And a second component to this “effective system” would be a licensing requirement for all persons who wish to...

The FBI "temporarily" halted efforts to process denial appeals on background checks, thereby leaving up to "7,100" Americans in limbo as to whether the federal government will allow them to buy a gun. According to USA Today, FBI Assistant Director Stephen Morris said the halt in processing appeals, which went into effect on January 20, became necessary because the number of Americans buying guns has overwhelmed FBI background check examiners.

2015 was a record year for the National Instant Checks System (NICS), and for firearm sales. The previous record year was in 2013, another year in which President Obama put considerable effort into passing strict gun control, and failed. It is one of the few policies that President Obama has not been able to use his allies in the media to ram legislation through Congress. In 2013, there were 21,093,271 background checks completed through NICS, according to the FBI.  That amounted to 16,031,210 additional private firearms added to the stocks, according to the ATF. The numbers for NICS checks...

As President Obama plans to pass new gun-control measures by executive order to extend the reach of background checks to all private sales, you may be wondering why there is such opposition to requiring all private-party gun sales to go through the same background check that gun dealers do. Evidence should drive public policy, not hope. If a policy has been tried, has it produced the desired results? This may be a surprise, but many states already have mandatory background checks for all firearm transfers, or for all handgun transfers; it is already a federal crime to transfer guns to...

Politico reports that President Obama's upcoming executive gun control will force a number of private gun sellers to get their Federal Firearms License (FFL) and perform background checks on every gun sold. [Snip] According to Politico, "Obama will tighten the definition of what it means to be 'engaged in the business' of firearms sales." Currently, those who sell firearms with the "principal objective of livelihood and profit" must have an FFL. Those selling as hobby or those who sell occasionally from a private collection do not. Obama plans to change the language so that those who sell as a hobby...

If there had been a proper background check on Bathhouse Barry BEFORE he became President, he never would have been allowed any security clearance, much less allowed to become President!!!!!!!!!!!!

Your alternate headline comes from Charles Cooke: “President Obama announces record gun sales in 2016.” So two of his major priorities heading into a presidential election year are (a) gun-grabbing and (b) telling Americans they’re un-American for worrying about importing thousands of Muslims from the site of the most vicious sectarian war on Earth. Good luck, Hillary. "The main thing that I've been trying to communicate over the last several of these horrific episodes is that, contrary to popular belief, Americans are not more violent than people in other developed countries," Mr. Obama said. "But they have more deadly weapons...

Police chiefs from across the United States called on Monday for universal background checks for firearms purchases, saying opinion polls consistently show that most Americans support such restrictions. The proliferation of firearms is one of the factors behind a rise in homicide rates in many U.S. cities this year, according to senior law enforcement officials at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago. …