Democrat Senator Joe Manchin is trying to get another background check bill through the Senate following last month’s defeat of a bill he introduced with Republican Senator Patrick Toomey.
“I truly believe the background check bill is possible to get passed,” Manchin told CBS News on Tuesday.
He also tried to sell the idea that laws restricting and regulating the Second Amendment actually expand it. Manchin said it is the job of Democrats in Congress to educate Americans who exercise the right to own firearms about this new interpretation of the Second Amendment.
“We are going to have to make some adjustments to it and find out where the comfort zone is, but what we need to do really is educate the law-abiding gun owners like myself, people that might belong to the NRA or other gun organizations that don’t believe this is a threat to their Second Amendment. This bill, not only protects your Second Amendment, it expands your Second Amendment,” Manchin told CBS This Morning.
“We had some people who were concerned that it would infringe on inter-family transfers, but it doesn’t at all,” he said. “We are going to clarify that language and anytime that you transfer to family — whether it is directly or online –it will be basically not subjected to the background check because that is a person transaction with a family member.”
Manchin’s government-run universal background system is designed to shut down gun shows and restrict commercial sales of firearms. It has little to do with Uncle Harry selling a shotgun to his nephew. It is about the government knowing how many firearms you own and where they are so they can be confiscated.
“Some of the proposals, like for example – universal background checks – would allow the federal government to surveil law-abiding citizens who exercise their Constitutional rights,” Senator Mike Lee, a Republican from Utah, said from the Senate floor last month. “One of the provisions we expect to see in the bill based on what we saw in the Judiciary Committee – on which I sit – would allow the Attorney General of the United States (Eric Holder) to promulgate regulations that could lead to a national registry system for guns.”