Petitioner
Jay Printz, Sheriff/Coroner, Ravalli County, Montana
Respondent
United States
Petitioner's Claim
That Congress's use of the Brady Act to require "chief law enforcement officers" (CLEOs) in a local jurisdiction to conduct background checks of handgun purchasers, and to perform other duties, is unconstitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Stephen P. Halbrook
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Walter Dellinger, Acting Solicitor General
Justices for the Court
Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia(writing for the Court), Clarence Thomas
Justices Dissenting
Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
27 June 1997
Decision
That the "Necessary and Proper" Clause in Article I of the Constitution did not give Congress authority to override state legislatures and require local CLEOs to perform background checks.
Significance
Inasmuch as Printz v. United States was about gun control, it would prove to be a setback for those who wanted to limit citizens' rights to own guns under the Second Amendment. However, Printz was more concerned withfreedom from federal interference in local affairs, and as such it represented a small step back from the Court's pro-federal government stance in preceding years. Sheriff Jay Printz himself, having won an earlier round in the battle that took his case before the Supreme Court, told USA Today in 1994that the Brady Bill was part of " . . . a trend toward federalization. Thisis just the tip of the iceberg." As for further attempts to strengthen the Brady Act with the proposed "Brady Bill II," he stated, "They're trying to disarm the American public."
John Hinckley Helps Write the Brady Bill
On 30 March 1981, a young man named John Hinckley--who later claimed he was inspired by the movie Taxi Driver and a desire to impress its young star, actress Jodie Foster--fired shots at President Ronald Reagan. Wounded in the shooting were the president, a secret service agent, and White House PressSecretary James Brady. President Reagan, who had been in office only two months, would recover from his wounds; Brady, on the other hand, would be paralyzed for life. The next month, a Turkish youth fired on the Pope, but did notkill him; but the soldiers who shot Egyptian President and Nobel laureate Anwar Sadat in October succeeded in their mission. Around the world, it seemed that a new age of assassination had come about, rivaling the spate of shootings in the 1960s that killed President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, as well as civil rights leader Martin Luther King and his colleague Malcolm X.
Many in the United States believed that domestic violence could be curtailedthrough revisions to the Second Amendment, which grants citizens the right tokeep and bear arms. Out of that earlier era of assassinations had come the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968, which among other things forbid arms sales to anyone under the age of 21 and prevented the transfer of a firearm to a convicted felon or a fugitive from justice. While most of these provisions seemed reasonable, conservatives feared that the true aim of anti-gun foes was a revocation of Second-Amendment rights, and the polity divided into two hostile camps on the gun control issue. In James Brady and his wife Sarah, whose liveshad been forever altered for the worse by a handgun, gun-control advocates gained a valuable ally: a former aide to a conservative president who happenedto be an advocate of gun control. Hence when in 1993 Congress passed a bill amending the GCA, it was called the Brady Act.
The Brady Act contained numerous provisions, but most significant for the purposes of Printz v. United States were those relating to background checks. The act authorized the attorney general of the United States to put in place a computerized instant background check system by 30 November 1998; andin the meantime, it established certain interim provisions. Under these provisions, firearm dealers desiring to sell a handgun must first receive from theperson buying it a statement called the Brady Form. The Brady Form containsthe transferee's name, address, date of birth, and a sworn statement that thetransferee is not among the class of prohibited purchasers such as felons and fugitives. Second, the dealer must verify the identity of the buyer by examining an identification document. Third, he must provide the CLEO of the prospective buyer's home jurisdiction with a copy of the completed Brady Form. Unless the CLEO earlier notifies the dealer that he has no reason to believe the transaction is illegal, the dealer has to wait five business days before concluding the sale. The law thus made it incumbent on CLEOs to "make a reasonable effort to ascertain within 5 business days whether receipt or possessionwould be in violation of the law, including research in whatever State and local record keeping systems are available and in a national system designatedby the Attorney General." The interim provisions contained other stipulations, including an order that a CLEO should be able to present a rejected gun-buyer with written reasons for the denial and an order that the CLEO destroy Brady Forms after a certain period of time.
Sheriffs Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana, and Richard Mack of Graham County, Arizona, filed separate actions challenging the constitutionality of these interim provisions, the fulfillment of which would place an enormous extra burden on their schedules. In both cases, the district court ruled that theBrady Act's interim provision requiring CLEOs to perform background checks was unconstitutional, but held that this could be separated from the rest of the act, leaving a system of voluntarily conducted background checks in place.The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed by a divided vote, finding that none of the Brady Act's interim provisions were unconstitutional.
The Majority Takes Its Cue from History
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed by a 5-4 vote. Because there was no text in the Constitution which addressed the specific question of whether Congress could legally compel state officers to execute federal law, wrote Justice Scalia, the Court looked for its answers in "historical understanding and practice,in the Constitution's structure, and in this Court's jurisprudence." Thoughhe warned that by itself an observation of constitutional practice was inconclusive, Justice Scalia noted that such an observation "tends to negate the existence of the congressional power asserted here." The early enactments of Congress showed that the federal government considered it within its power to require state judges to enforce federal law in the judicial branch, but therewas less evidence to justify such congressional influence in the state executive realm. Even though The Federalist contained portions suggesting that the federal government could impose responsibilities on state officers, there was nothing therein to suggest that these responsibilities could be forced on the states without consent. The assumption instead seemed to be that thestates would consent, as Justice O'Connor had observed in FERC v. Mississippi (1982). The historical record simply did not bear out the existenceof "executive commandeering federal statutes," except perhaps in very recentyears.
Turning to the Constitution itself, one saw at work a system of "dual sovereignty," whereby states surrendered some of their powers and gained others. "The Framers," Justice Scalia wrote, "rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States, and instead designed a systemin which the State and Federal Governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people." To simply "impress into its service . . . at no cost to itself . . . the police officers of the 50 States" would be an unlawful way ofaugmenting the federal government's power. If the federal government exertedtoo much control over the states, this could also have an ill effect on theseparation of powers into three branches. The Brady Act, Justice Scalia wrote, "effectively transfers the President's responsibility to administer the laws enacted by Congress . . . thousands of CLEOs in the 50 States . . . "
The dissent asserted that the Brady Bill was valid by the "Necessary and Proper" Clause in Article I, section 8, which grants Congress power "To make allLaws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" the powers granted to Congress--in this case the Commerce Clause grant of power to regulate handgun sales. Justice Scalia held that the Brady Bill's constitutionality could not be sustained on this basis alone, not when it violated the principle of state sovereignty. Citing New York v. United States (1992),Justice Scalia held that it was unlawful for the federal government to directly compel a state to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program. The whole object of the Brady Act's provisions in this situation was to compel the state executive toward certain actions, Justice Scalia wrote; hence it was pointless to attempt, as the dissent did, a type of "balancing analysis."
Given that it had eliminated CLEOs' responsibility to conduct background checks, the Court had no need to review the petitioners' concerns about the provisions requiring them to destroy Brady Forms after a certain amount of time. As for the more significant severability question--whether the interim provisions could be pulled out of the Brady Act without invalidating the entire act--the Court declined to address this issue. Removal of CLEOs' requirements would leave open the question of whether firearms dealers could be required to comply, and since no such dealers were before the Court as petitioners, the question was left unanswered.
Justice O'Connor issued a short concurring statement, as did Justice Thomas.The former noted that precedent, both in the form of earlier Court rulings, and of past practice, supported the Court's ruling. The Brady Bill, she wrote,further violated the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers to the states.Justice Thomas, too, cited Tenth Amendment backing for the Court's decision,and wrote separately to further emphasize the enumeration--and therefore limitation--of federal powers over the states.
The Dissent Offers a Different Reading of History
Of the four dissenters, several wrote opinions questioning the majority's reading of history, particularly of the ruling in New York. Justice Stevens, in an opinion joined by the other three--Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter--held that Congress was fully authorized by the Constitution to imposeaffirmative obligations (i.e., "You must do this . . . ") on citizens. "Thisconclusion," he wrote, "is firmly supported by the text of the Constitution,the early history of the Nation, decisions of this Court, and a correct understanding of the basic structure of the Federal Government." The present casedid not require a study of the more complex issues raised in New York,he wrote, nor was it necessary to consider questions such as whether local or federal officials could better carry out a federal program. "The question,"as Justice Stevens put it, "is whether Congress, acting on behalf of the people of the entire Nation, may require local law enforcement officers to perform certain duties during the interim needed for the development of a federalgun control program."
The measures suggested in the Brady Act's interim provisions were appropriatein a national emergency, such as that posed by the rash of handgun-related crimes. In its ruling, the Court was going beyond upholding the powers of thestates under the Tenth Amendment, Justice Stevens suggested, and instead limiting the authority of Congress. "There is not a clause, sentence, or paragraph in the entire text of the Constitution of the United States," he wrote, "that supports the proposition that a local police officer can ignore a commandcontained in a statute enacted by Congress pursuant to an express delegationof power enumerated in Article I" of the Constitution. Justice Stevens went on to question the Court's review of the historical record in New Yorkand elsewhere. He concluded by observing that the provision before the Court's review was comparable to a statute requiring local law-enforcement officersto report the identities of missing children to the Crime Control Center ofthe Justice Department, rather than "an offensive federal command to a sovereign state."
Justice Souter, too, dissented; his principal difference with Justice Stevensbeing that his primary objections came from The Federalist. Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Stevens, issued an opinion in which he added to thelatter's dissent by noting the uniquely American difficulty of reconciling the power of the national government with that of local government. Looking atthe past experience of federal program implementation, he noted, it was not necessary to read the Brady Act as overwhelming a state government's powers. As for the majority's view that measures such as those provided in the act were unconstitutional, Justice Breyer sided with Justice Stevens that "the Constitution is itself silent on the matter."
Impact
Like many Supreme Court cases, Printz was not really about the issue it supposedly addressed--in this case, gun control. Instead, it was about therelative power of the federal and state governments, an issue raised in numerous parts of the Constitution, including the Tenth Amendment. Jerome L. Wilson pointed out the difference between the practical and the constitutional issues in the title of his August of 1997 New Jersey Law Journal article,"It Wasn't About Handguns at All." Yet as in many cases, to those involved,the practical issue was the important question. At an earlier stage in the history of the case, Sarah Brady told USA Today that "In light of the success of the Brady law in stopping the cash-and-carry sale of handguns to felons . . . any sheriff who doesn't use the five days to do a background checkshould be ashamed." Many viewed the verdict in Printz as a judgment onhandgun control itself, not on federalism; certainly it was the first majorchallenge to the Brady Act, just three months after the latter had been passed by Congress. But a writer in News Media & the Law perhaps best glimpsed the constitutional implications by noting that the U.S. District Court in South Carolina could use the Supreme Court's Printz ruling to strike down the South Carolina Driver's Privacy Protection Act. The latter, which the writer said limits public access to Department of Motor Vehicles records and places an undue burden on the states, could be challenged on the basisof a Tenth-Amendment violation.
Related Cases
The Brady Bill--Does It Really Fight Crime?
The Brady Handgun Control Act provides gun-control measures such as the establishment of a five-day waiting period for purchase of a firearm. The law's passage in 1993 highlighted the continuing controversy over gun control. In 1996, President Bill Clinton called for measures to tighten Brady Bill restrictions with regard to persons convicted of misdemeanors in domestic abuse cases.According to Bob Walker of Handgun Control Inc., Clinton's new measures would "close a real loophole in the law" and keep a "significant number of defendants who plea-bargain felonies down to misdemeanors" from easily purchasing guns. Tanya Metaksa of the National Rifle Association (NRA) criticized the newrestrictions as "feel-good legislation that won't work." Metaksa suggested that punishing abusers by preventing them from buying guns would not curb violence, since domestic abuse most often does not involve firearms. A headline in US News noted that at least both sides agree on one thing: the law will not prevent most criminals from obtaining handguns.
Sources
"A New Round for and Against the Brady Bill." US News & World Report, September 9, 1996, p. 8.
Jay Printz, Sheriff/Coroner, Ravalli County, Montana
Respondent
United States
Petitioner's Claim
That Congress's use of the Brady Act to require "chief law enforcement officers" (CLEOs) in a local jurisdiction to conduct background checks of handgun purchasers, and to perform other duties, is unconstitutional.
Chief Lawyer for Petitioner
Stephen P. Halbrook
Chief Lawyer for Respondent
Walter Dellinger, Acting Solicitor General
Justices for the Court
Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Connor, William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia(writing for the Court), Clarence Thomas
Justices Dissenting
Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens
Place
Washington, D.C.
Date of Decision
27 June 1997
Decision
That the "Necessary and Proper" Clause in Article I of the Constitution did not give Congress authority to override state legislatures and require local CLEOs to perform background checks.
Significance
Inasmuch as Printz v. United States was about gun control, it would prove to be a setback for those who wanted to limit citizens' rights to own guns under the Second Amendment. However, Printz was more concerned withfreedom from federal interference in local affairs, and as such it represented a small step back from the Court's pro-federal government stance in preceding years. Sheriff Jay Printz himself, having won an earlier round in the battle that took his case before the Supreme Court, told USA Today in 1994that the Brady Bill was part of " . . . a trend toward federalization. Thisis just the tip of the iceberg." As for further attempts to strengthen the Brady Act with the proposed "Brady Bill II," he stated, "They're trying to disarm the American public."
John Hinckley Helps Write the Brady Bill
On 30 March 1981, a young man named John Hinckley--who later claimed he was inspired by the movie Taxi Driver and a desire to impress its young star, actress Jodie Foster--fired shots at President Ronald Reagan. Wounded in the shooting were the president, a secret service agent, and White House PressSecretary James Brady. President Reagan, who had been in office only two months, would recover from his wounds; Brady, on the other hand, would be paralyzed for life. The next month, a Turkish youth fired on the Pope, but did notkill him; but the soldiers who shot Egyptian President and Nobel laureate Anwar Sadat in October succeeded in their mission. Around the world, it seemed that a new age of assassination had come about, rivaling the spate of shootings in the 1960s that killed President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby, as well as civil rights leader Martin Luther King and his colleague Malcolm X.
Many in the United States believed that domestic violence could be curtailedthrough revisions to the Second Amendment, which grants citizens the right tokeep and bear arms. Out of that earlier era of assassinations had come the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968, which among other things forbid arms sales to anyone under the age of 21 and prevented the transfer of a firearm to a convicted felon or a fugitive from justice. While most of these provisions seemed reasonable, conservatives feared that the true aim of anti-gun foes was a revocation of Second-Amendment rights, and the polity divided into two hostile camps on the gun control issue. In James Brady and his wife Sarah, whose liveshad been forever altered for the worse by a handgun, gun-control advocates gained a valuable ally: a former aide to a conservative president who happenedto be an advocate of gun control. Hence when in 1993 Congress passed a bill amending the GCA, it was called the Brady Act.
The Brady Act contained numerous provisions, but most significant for the purposes of Printz v. United States were those relating to background checks. The act authorized the attorney general of the United States to put in place a computerized instant background check system by 30 November 1998; andin the meantime, it established certain interim provisions. Under these provisions, firearm dealers desiring to sell a handgun must first receive from theperson buying it a statement called the Brady Form. The Brady Form containsthe transferee's name, address, date of birth, and a sworn statement that thetransferee is not among the class of prohibited purchasers such as felons and fugitives. Second, the dealer must verify the identity of the buyer by examining an identification document. Third, he must provide the CLEO of the prospective buyer's home jurisdiction with a copy of the completed Brady Form. Unless the CLEO earlier notifies the dealer that he has no reason to believe the transaction is illegal, the dealer has to wait five business days before concluding the sale. The law thus made it incumbent on CLEOs to "make a reasonable effort to ascertain within 5 business days whether receipt or possessionwould be in violation of the law, including research in whatever State and local record keeping systems are available and in a national system designatedby the Attorney General." The interim provisions contained other stipulations, including an order that a CLEO should be able to present a rejected gun-buyer with written reasons for the denial and an order that the CLEO destroy Brady Forms after a certain period of time.
Sheriffs Jay Printz of Ravalli County, Montana, and Richard Mack of Graham County, Arizona, filed separate actions challenging the constitutionality of these interim provisions, the fulfillment of which would place an enormous extra burden on their schedules. In both cases, the district court ruled that theBrady Act's interim provision requiring CLEOs to perform background checks was unconstitutional, but held that this could be separated from the rest of the act, leaving a system of voluntarily conducted background checks in place.The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed by a divided vote, finding that none of the Brady Act's interim provisions were unconstitutional.
The Majority Takes Its Cue from History
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed by a 5-4 vote. Because there was no text in the Constitution which addressed the specific question of whether Congress could legally compel state officers to execute federal law, wrote Justice Scalia, the Court looked for its answers in "historical understanding and practice,in the Constitution's structure, and in this Court's jurisprudence." Thoughhe warned that by itself an observation of constitutional practice was inconclusive, Justice Scalia noted that such an observation "tends to negate the existence of the congressional power asserted here." The early enactments of Congress showed that the federal government considered it within its power to require state judges to enforce federal law in the judicial branch, but therewas less evidence to justify such congressional influence in the state executive realm. Even though The Federalist contained portions suggesting that the federal government could impose responsibilities on state officers, there was nothing therein to suggest that these responsibilities could be forced on the states without consent. The assumption instead seemed to be that thestates would consent, as Justice O'Connor had observed in FERC v. Mississippi (1982). The historical record simply did not bear out the existenceof "executive commandeering federal statutes," except perhaps in very recentyears.
Turning to the Constitution itself, one saw at work a system of "dual sovereignty," whereby states surrendered some of their powers and gained others. "The Framers," Justice Scalia wrote, "rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States, and instead designed a systemin which the State and Federal Governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people." To simply "impress into its service . . . at no cost to itself . . . the police officers of the 50 States" would be an unlawful way ofaugmenting the federal government's power. If the federal government exertedtoo much control over the states, this could also have an ill effect on theseparation of powers into three branches. The Brady Act, Justice Scalia wrote, "effectively transfers the President's responsibility to administer the laws enacted by Congress . . . thousands of CLEOs in the 50 States . . . "
The dissent asserted that the Brady Bill was valid by the "Necessary and Proper" Clause in Article I, section 8, which grants Congress power "To make allLaws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution" the powers granted to Congress--in this case the Commerce Clause grant of power to regulate handgun sales. Justice Scalia held that the Brady Bill's constitutionality could not be sustained on this basis alone, not when it violated the principle of state sovereignty. Citing New York v. United States (1992),Justice Scalia held that it was unlawful for the federal government to directly compel a state to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program. The whole object of the Brady Act's provisions in this situation was to compel the state executive toward certain actions, Justice Scalia wrote; hence it was pointless to attempt, as the dissent did, a type of "balancing analysis."
Given that it had eliminated CLEOs' responsibility to conduct background checks, the Court had no need to review the petitioners' concerns about the provisions requiring them to destroy Brady Forms after a certain amount of time. As for the more significant severability question--whether the interim provisions could be pulled out of the Brady Act without invalidating the entire act--the Court declined to address this issue. Removal of CLEOs' requirements would leave open the question of whether firearms dealers could be required to comply, and since no such dealers were before the Court as petitioners, the question was left unanswered.
Justice O'Connor issued a short concurring statement, as did Justice Thomas.The former noted that precedent, both in the form of earlier Court rulings, and of past practice, supported the Court's ruling. The Brady Bill, she wrote,further violated the Tenth Amendment's reservation of powers to the states.Justice Thomas, too, cited Tenth Amendment backing for the Court's decision,and wrote separately to further emphasize the enumeration--and therefore limitation--of federal powers over the states.
The Dissent Offers a Different Reading of History
Of the four dissenters, several wrote opinions questioning the majority's reading of history, particularly of the ruling in New York. Justice Stevens, in an opinion joined by the other three--Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Souter--held that Congress was fully authorized by the Constitution to imposeaffirmative obligations (i.e., "You must do this . . . ") on citizens. "Thisconclusion," he wrote, "is firmly supported by the text of the Constitution,the early history of the Nation, decisions of this Court, and a correct understanding of the basic structure of the Federal Government." The present casedid not require a study of the more complex issues raised in New York,he wrote, nor was it necessary to consider questions such as whether local or federal officials could better carry out a federal program. "The question,"as Justice Stevens put it, "is whether Congress, acting on behalf of the people of the entire Nation, may require local law enforcement officers to perform certain duties during the interim needed for the development of a federalgun control program."
The measures suggested in the Brady Act's interim provisions were appropriatein a national emergency, such as that posed by the rash of handgun-related crimes. In its ruling, the Court was going beyond upholding the powers of thestates under the Tenth Amendment, Justice Stevens suggested, and instead limiting the authority of Congress. "There is not a clause, sentence, or paragraph in the entire text of the Constitution of the United States," he wrote, "that supports the proposition that a local police officer can ignore a commandcontained in a statute enacted by Congress pursuant to an express delegationof power enumerated in Article I" of the Constitution. Justice Stevens went on to question the Court's review of the historical record in New Yorkand elsewhere. He concluded by observing that the provision before the Court's review was comparable to a statute requiring local law-enforcement officersto report the identities of missing children to the Crime Control Center ofthe Justice Department, rather than "an offensive federal command to a sovereign state."
Justice Souter, too, dissented; his principal difference with Justice Stevensbeing that his primary objections came from The Federalist. Justice Breyer, joined by Justice Stevens, issued an opinion in which he added to thelatter's dissent by noting the uniquely American difficulty of reconciling the power of the national government with that of local government. Looking atthe past experience of federal program implementation, he noted, it was not necessary to read the Brady Act as overwhelming a state government's powers. As for the majority's view that measures such as those provided in the act were unconstitutional, Justice Breyer sided with Justice Stevens that "the Constitution is itself silent on the matter."
Impact
Like many Supreme Court cases, Printz was not really about the issue it supposedly addressed--in this case, gun control. Instead, it was about therelative power of the federal and state governments, an issue raised in numerous parts of the Constitution, including the Tenth Amendment. Jerome L. Wilson pointed out the difference between the practical and the constitutional issues in the title of his August of 1997 New Jersey Law Journal article,"It Wasn't About Handguns at All." Yet as in many cases, to those involved,the practical issue was the important question. At an earlier stage in the history of the case, Sarah Brady told USA Today that "In light of the success of the Brady law in stopping the cash-and-carry sale of handguns to felons . . . any sheriff who doesn't use the five days to do a background checkshould be ashamed." Many viewed the verdict in Printz as a judgment onhandgun control itself, not on federalism; certainly it was the first majorchallenge to the Brady Act, just three months after the latter had been passed by Congress. But a writer in News Media & the Law perhaps best glimpsed the constitutional implications by noting that the U.S. District Court in South Carolina could use the Supreme Court's Printz ruling to strike down the South Carolina Driver's Privacy Protection Act. The latter, which the writer said limits public access to Department of Motor Vehicles records and places an undue burden on the states, could be challenged on the basisof a Tenth-Amendment violation.
Related Cases
- National League of Cities v. Usery, 426 U.S. 833 (1976).
- FERC v. Mississippi, 456 U.S. 742 (1982).
- INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983).
- Garcia v. San Antonio Metropolitan Transit Authority, 469 U.S. 528(1985).
- Bowsher v. Synar , 478 U.S. 714 (1986).
- South Carolina v. Baker, 485 U.S. 505 (1988).
- Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452 (1991).
- New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992).
The Brady Bill--Does It Really Fight Crime?
The Brady Handgun Control Act provides gun-control measures such as the establishment of a five-day waiting period for purchase of a firearm. The law's passage in 1993 highlighted the continuing controversy over gun control. In 1996, President Bill Clinton called for measures to tighten Brady Bill restrictions with regard to persons convicted of misdemeanors in domestic abuse cases.According to Bob Walker of Handgun Control Inc., Clinton's new measures would "close a real loophole in the law" and keep a "significant number of defendants who plea-bargain felonies down to misdemeanors" from easily purchasing guns. Tanya Metaksa of the National Rifle Association (NRA) criticized the newrestrictions as "feel-good legislation that won't work." Metaksa suggested that punishing abusers by preventing them from buying guns would not curb violence, since domestic abuse most often does not involve firearms. A headline in US News noted that at least both sides agree on one thing: the law will not prevent most criminals from obtaining handguns.
Sources
"A New Round for and Against the Brady Bill." US News & World Report, September 9, 1996, p. 8.
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