Andrew Clyde US Congress
Rep-Elect Andrew Clyde is firmly pro-2A. (Photo: Clyde campaign)
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Andrew Clyde US Congress
Rep-Elect Andrew Clyde is firmly pro-2A. (Photo: Clyde campaign)

US Congressman-elect Andrew Clyde from Georgia is preparing to take office with gun rights in mind. Clyde is a gun store owner who got his start working out of his own garage back in 1991 and found his way into politics after the government seized almost one million dollars from his bank account seven years ago.

He eventually got most of his money back from the IRS along with an apology. There’s also a law named after him — the Clyde-Hirsch-Sowers RESPECT Act — so the IRS can’t do that to anyone else again.

So, what’s on Clyde’s mind now that he’s headed for Washington? Eliminating background checks on firearm sales, among other things.

Fox News reports:

Paramount to Clyde’s platform is his staunch support of the Second Amendment and belief that there should be no government constraint of gun ownership.

While Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress support expanding background checks on firearm purchases, closing loopholes at gun shows and more, Clyde is convinced existing regulations have already gone too far.

He campaigned on the “complete elimination” of the background check system established by the 1993 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. The law requires FBI criminal history checks on individuals before gun purchases in an effort to prevent felons, domestic abusers, drug addicts and those adjudicated as mentally unfit from purchasing a gun.

Andrew Clyde for Congress
Courtesy Clyde for Congress Twitter Page

Clyde noted failures in the background check system that have been highlighted during the COVID-19 gun sales spike:

Typically, if a buyer hasn’t gotten a determination on the background check after three days, then the firearms dealer can sell the weapon anyway.

But during the pandemic, the “government simply ignored that [three-day rule] completely,” Clyde said. Background checks are only good for 30 days. So when results took more than a month, they were already invalid and the prospective buyer had to start the process all over again, Clyde said.

“It is completely broken,” Clyde said of the background check system. “It puts the federal government between the Constitution and the individual in a way that denies the person their individual constitutional right. That’s not right.”

Clyde also wants to do away with taxes on guns and ammunition. It should be interesting to see what comes of his pro-gun passion when he gets to the halls of Congress.

So, a question for you, dear reader: Should background checks be done away with altogether? Is Clyde right in feeling the government is far too involved in gun sales and that background checks as they are currently carried out hinder Second Amendment rights? Or is he way off base. Discuss.

 

 

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85 COMMENTS

    • He’ll need more than that- it’ll never make it out of committee let alone get a reading there. Still, a good thing for a newbie to place on his resume.

  1. Of course background checks should be eliminated.

    Criminals ignore them and buy on the black market. They may not be a high IQ demographic, but they are smart enough not to try to buy within the system when they know they are prohibited.

    The authorities fail to enter the relevant information, or even to enforce the law for racist reasons (Cruz, Parkland) so that a number of mass shooters have passed background when they should not have. And the failing was in the government/legal/(in)justice system itself.

    A large percentage of background check denials, certainly more than half and likely a lot more than that, are incorrect due to similarities in names, or states and law enforcement coding certain offenses incorrectly to make them prohibiting. Pennsylvania’s 302 for example, which should not be prohibiting but is. If you can afford a lawyer to fight it and, worse, if you even know that is a possibility you can prevail.

    A large percentage of background check denials are for things are technically prohibiting but should not be. Things such as chronologically distant crimes, drug possession, DUI/DWI, domestic offenses which often involved no violence and no desire on anyone’s part for someone to be arrested, but LEO often have a policy of “some is getting arrested” in domestic situations.

    There is no valid reason for any kind of decent society to maintain such an onerous imposition upon it’s own law abiding citizens.

    • CP, while that seems well thought out, it also seems overly complicated considering the amount of data available for consideration. I submit that all we need to know is how much the system has cost over the past 27 years, total, taxpayer, gun shop, and firearm owner, versus how many people have been imprisoned for violating these rules. I don’t know those numbers but they should not be difficult to find unless my guess is correct, that many billions of dollars have been spent, hundreds of agents hired, and a vanishingly small number of successful prosecutions. If that is correct, the numbers will be thoroughly hidden. Another interesting consideration would be the effect on violent criminal activity! All I have ever seen was the effect of impeding legal firearm sales, as if that was a legitimate goal.

  2. He’s absolutely right. NICS has been broken ever since it was implemented. They can keep their law about convicted felons (until that’s repealed too), but don’t prevent people from exercising their God given right to self defense. And since they prosecute almost nobody for failing a NICS check, what good is it at all?

    • Pennsylvania state police absolutely prosecute every denial that is not appealed, and all denials that are appealed and the appeal is lost. Almost none of the prosecutorial victims are actual criminals or people who should be prohibited.

      • That would be the only state that does it then…because the VAST majority of denials go by the wayside…probably because they should not have been denied in the first place…
        Any active or retired ATF agents have any information to share on this subject?

        • Good for him. However with the voter fraud and voter mistrust going on in GA voter participation is questionable in the upcoming Senate races especially for those who are not democRats.
          Add to that to Republicans blocking POTUS and public requests for $2000.00 instead of the almost worthless $600.00 in scraps remaining from the pork and voter morale drops even farther.
          Yeah I know there will be some nitwit somewhere with his mouth full who thinks $600.00 is $600.00 too much. However these times are not ordinary and if you want to play this game you do what you can to win.
          After I read a post on this forum where the writer had the integrity to say the $600.00 was about enough to get his 2 rifles out of pawn I wrote my two Republican Congressmen and gave them a piece of my mind from the stimulas to election fraud. Well don’t just sit there write your members of congress otherwise you are only preaching to the choir.

        • This is the first sentence in the Epoch times that all of the readers here need to sign up for.

          “President Donald Trump on Sunday evening signed the $2.3 trillion pandemic relief and spending bill after reaching an agreement with Congress over stimulus checks, Section 230, and voter fraud, the White House said.”

          Note that voter fraud was part of the deal as well as Twitter and Facebook’s section 230 that they hide behind. I took this as a bright ray of hope that there is a chance Trump might just pull through all this.

        • The news still reports this way though:

          “Trump chose chaos at first, but backed down under pressure to sign the bill”

          What a load of shit.

        • “after reaching an agreement with Congress over stimulus checks, Section 230, and voter fraud, the White House said.“

          Hilarious, and the two bills Trump objected to were negotiated by his treasury secretary Mnuchin, and was the very budget Trump presented to the Congress, including Lindsey Graham’s millions of dollars for Pakistan.

          And I thought Trump said he would stop the “carnage in America”, yet his soldiers are shooting and killing innocent old men and children, what’s up with that?

          And the ‘alternative news’ reports that Anthony Q Warner was killed in the missile attack on the AT&T espionage headquarters in Nashville.

          Please accept my condolences for the loss of Q, while many will mourn, pizza shops across America will be much safer now.

        • “Trumps troops”, ok Miner if you want to play that game then “Obama’s Troops” get to own Nidal Hasan, Ivan Lopez, and Robert Bales for a start. Alternatively, your premise if stupid and you’re a dumbshit.

      • CP, you may think PA police prosecute every refusal (although police don’t prosecute anybody), but the numbers *nationwide* are generally fewer than 100 prosecutions a year with fewer than 50 convictions, out of many thousands of refusals claimed to be for our “protection”.

    • “NICS has been broken ever since it was implemented. ”

      That may well be but it’s still a good tool for us to use when the cretins come around blaming all of the American gun owners for the deeds of someone that was a well-known crazy being able to get their hands on a firearm through the same system we are expected to use. No one to blame but government, it’s employees or the overwhelming bureaucracy that stops any and all postive action on behalf of the American people for the sake of its bloated government.

  3. Andrew clyde is a great man but unfortunately the NWO will require the confiscation of all firearms just as every fascist and communist government including Hitler’s Third Reich has done in the past.

    If Biden is sworn into office it’s over for the second amendment. It will start with registration acts followed by $200 tax per magazine over 10 rounds, followed by an outright ban on semi automatic rifles and a massive tax on ammunition. It will start small and keep growing until all firearms have to be handed in.

    Biden sold out to and is 100% controlled by the Chinese communists who plan to take over the world.

    • David, stop playing the fool, we know who you are and what you stand for!

      “David Emery is a Portland-based writer and editor with more than two decades’ experience investigating rumors, hoaxes, and urban legends, first as a freelancer for About.com (1997-2016), and for Snopes.com since July 2016.”

      You are a lying agent provocateur, a paid troll here to disrupt this forum with crazy talk.

      • Wow, you figured that out based solely on the fact that he posts “mysteriously” under his own full name?🙄

        If it is him, you think the fact that he investigates and disproves hoaxes for a living means he’s a lying troll? Projection, thy name is Miner!

      • “You are a lying agent provocateur, a paid troll here to disrupt this forum with crazy talk.”

        LMAO…..Pot meet kettle.

  4. God’s speed to you sir! There are a whole bunch of pencil pushers and anti’s in that bloated organization gonna be workin against you!

  5. So, before we had background checks, the carnage, corpses, and chaos in our streets must have resembled a Charlton Heston Bible movie.

    What? There was no daily carnage? The corpses were not piled high in the street while cart-men yelled “Bring out yer dead”? Say it ain’t so. Bloody chaos did rampage through the back alleys, pool halls, and quilting clubs? How could that have been?

    Government always makes things better. How could anyone believe less government is better government? It seems straight out of a novel by that Rand woman.

    /Sarcasm.

    • I certainly hope so. Long overdue.

      Time to snuff out the rinos the same as we aim to snuff out the “progressive’s”.

      • “Time to snuff out the rinos the same as we aim to snuff out the “progressive’s”.“

        The ball is in your court Snuffy, when you feel like a frog, leap.

      • Do you really want to know the origin of the words you so eloquently posted? I believe that the copyright on the lyrics has lapsed by this time.

    • Yup. Any crime committed with a firearm in Singapore is upgraded to a capital offense. Cuts down on the “repeat offender” problem we have here.

    • Crimes done without a gun also, exactly the same. We’re supposed to pat a guy on the back and wish him well if he stabs or beats someone to death, but give him the shits if he shoots someone? WTF sense does that make to anyone?

  6. If the sale can proceed after three days of no determination, why are the dealers not just completing the sales and cutting NICS out of the picture?

    • You didn’t indicate a joke, Jim, so here’s a straight answer. You got that wrong, all sales must have a check submitted, if the Feds cannot get you an answer within 3 days of that submission, the sale may proceed. If the dealer does not even submit a check, the sale is illegal no matter how many days have passed.
      OTOH, the post asserted that the gubt had somehow ignored that recently, which sounds like nonsense since it is out of their control, you apply for the check, no answer in 3 days, you proceed.

  7. I’d be more impressed if he was going after the National Firearms Act and all limitations on SBR’s, suppressors, Red Flag Laws and National Reciprocity. “Make my Day”.

  8. Even if someone was convicted of a felony they should have right to own a gun to protect themselves and their family!! If they have to use the felony it should go back no more than 5 years.

    • Thousands of gang members and heroin dealers are thanking you for your thoughtful sentiments, please write your congressman and express your feelings.

      • Can’t do anything about gang members and heroin dealers except make them “prohibited persons” under NICS? Is that the only law in the US anymore, that we must depend upon it alone, for literally everything, despite the fact that it is unconstitutional? You are a moron!

  9. Good for him. Strict compliance with the Bill of Rights would be nice. Unfortunately the majority of Americans are sheep. He is a lone wolf surrounded by rabid sheep. Once government gives itself more power we have no chance of getting it back.

  10. What the actual hell? I tuned in for “Tales from The Left, Holiday Edition” …. has anyone heard from Miner? Miner?…….. Miner?

    • Leadhead, thank you for inquiring after my whereabouts, I appreciate the interest!

      I’m having some Cuban coffee, enjoying the delicious irony of Trump and Pelosi working together to increase the stimulus check amount to $2000.

      • Yeah, not a fan of their coffee or stinking up the house with burning rope, but I do like the occasional C.C. Anejo7Anos via Canada (NOT the Bacardi batshit), but hey, you do you! Just think about the celebrating you could have with a clean bill “assistance package” – minus the pork….would work out to a little over $2700 for every fucking person in the U S. Nasty Nancy could restock a week’s worth of ice cream with that check. (Might have to get Parker Brothers to help out with printing the money for it ,since they have a stock of ink for the original colors.)

        • “a clean bill “assistance package” – minus the pork”

          Yes, I agree, unfortunately it was trumps handpicked negotiator, cabinet secretary and Wall Street billionaire Mnuchin who linked trumps budget bill with the stimulus package.

          I developed a taste for Cuban coffee from Tony’s in Ybor city when I was spending quite a bit of time at Elgin AFB.

          Two things, first you need real Cuban coffee with chicory and second, heat the milk and honey up in a sauce pan before adding to the brewed coffee.

      • Do you not think Nazi Pignosi is advocating the stimulus boost with one hand then speaking out of her other face while she slips her other hand into our wallets to extract that $2000 plus more in the form of higher taxes, especially of the income variety? She has NEVER done anything for the citizenry in an altruistic fashion since she has been in any political orifice. She legislates only to feather her own nest, despite what she sprews while stumping every two years.
        Is it any wonder that nothing is ever positively accomplished with her guiding HER ship of State???

  11. ” Clyde is convinced existing regulations have already gone too far.”

    “Should background checks be done away with altogether? Is Clyde right in feeling the government is far too involved in gun sales and that background checks as they are currently carried out hinder Second Amendment rights? Or is he way off base.”

    As any and all forms of gun control are un Constitutional,Yes,the US as a nation needs to adhere to the supreme law of the land and rescind each and every un Constitutional law. Also prosecute those who voted in favor them, all the treasons politicians who willing violated their oath, each and every one of them still living.

  12. … “government simply ignored that [three-day rule] completely,” Clyde said. Background checks are only good for 30 days. So when results took more than a month, they were already invalid …

    This is news to me. I don’t quite get it. I always thought that if nothing was returned on the NICS check in three days, the store just sold the gun; in accordance with the law. So a vendor needs permission from the NICS system to go ahead when they fail at their job?

    • An FFL may sell a gun after three days with no NICS response. However doing so is not covered under PLCAA and leaves them civilly liable for any misuse of the firearm, so most won’t. This has led to de facto ban by bureaucracy in jurisdictions in which the FBI knows they can get away with it, such as NYC. Now, a vendor is legally required to provide a refund upon refusal to go ahead anyway, but most people don’t know that and most vendors don’t volunteer that information (or, for that matter, do big box stores even bother to train their gun counter personel on that point of the law.)

      That said, I once again feel the need to reiterate that the BATFE is, under the Marbury v Madison doctrine, not a government agency with a legal mandate from Congress, and is therefore just another drug gang and can not enjoy any legal protections that your local pimps and pushers don’t also recieve. You should treat their agents — and those who would defend them — accordingly.

  13. Unless he has a plan to strike a very ambitious “grand bargain” with the Democrats to exchange NICS checks for something huge, this is just cheap talk. It’s like AOC promising M4A and free tuition to her hipster stans in Red Hook: easy to promise because it will never happen.

    And if Joe Biden let him scrap NICS checks, and then a disqualified mass shooter bought an AK right over the counter and shot 30 people in a water park, what then? Background checks on steroids, with a 2-week waiting period.

    • “Unless he has a plan to strike a very ambitious “grand bargain” with the Democrats.”

      As Marxist’s are antithetical to the Constitution and our Republican form of government, ignore them for the vermin to the republic they are as their goal is the destruction of this nation.

  14. the federal government fucks up 1 car funerals on a regular basis
    cant each state just do their own and then check with all the others
    its what they do with drivers marriage hunting and fishing licenses

  15. If a person has any sense, he should presume that everyone he meets is armed. Better to presume so, and avoid conflict, than to boldly provoke an altercation, only to be blown away when he pulls his gun. To me, the background check is pretty much meaningless. If you pass it, it only means that you’ve jumped through all the correct hoops. If you fail it, it only means you have to jump through a different set of hoops to get a gun. So, meaningless. He who wants a gun, will get a gun.

    • While we’re on the subject of “never gonna happen”: would you trade semiautos as NFA items for removing the Hyde Amendment? Keep in mind that the semis would he able to be converted into machine guns.

      At first, I was a no because they could put a Hyde Amendment back in at a later date, but the number of transferable machine guns would explode by an order of magnitude in the meantime.

      What if they also removed suppressors and non-semi SBRs and SBSs?

      • When you stipulate, as you propose, that the government actually has authority to do any such thing, they can also make possession of *ANY* firearm punishable by summary execution on the spot. Whereupon the Hyde Amendment will do jackshit.

    • Even if my state never repeals its ban on all things fun I want to see that happen at the federal level. The price drop and increased availability will spur further development into technology that is decades behind.

    • Yes, I would agree. That one, along with the later Dingell-Johnson Act (similar excise tax on boats and fishing equipment), have raised many millions of dollars for various wildlife conservation related projects over the years.

    • The goal of conservation could be achieved in a capitalistic fashion just like everything else. There is no excuse for an enumerated right to be taxed or the method by which it is exercised.

  16. Republicans held the House, the Senate and the White House for two years and did nothing for gun rights.

    Why should I expect any better results now?

    I mean, I appreciate the thoughts, but.

    • “Progressives” progress, and “Conservatives” conserve.

      It completely sucks, but that’s the way it has been – almost without exception – since our Republic became a dumbocracy, and probably the best we can hope for.

  17. Serious question. Has an agency, or significant program, at the federal or even state level, ever actually ended? I don’t mean ending by being absorbed into some other agency or program. I mean ended either by running its course and stopping, or ended by being dismantled, with staff being laid off, equipment going to auction, and the building being sold. All gone, rather than spread out into other parts of the gov’t. I did a cursory check, and found nothing. Well, nothing except for the now defunct village of New Rome, OH, which was dismantled by Ohio’s AG because its only reason for existence was to be a speed trap to raise money to support itself and a handful of jobs.

  18. In PRINCIPLE, I don’t mind a background check if it’s done and then thrown away.
    BUT LET’S GET REAL! I found a new hunting rifle I wanted to try out. Pennsylvania does an “INSTANT” background check. I waited over 3 hours at Cabelas (until the store closed) and then had to come back 3 days later (a 150 mile one-way trip) to finally be able to pick it up!
    About a week ago I bought an ANTIQUE rifle that NO ammunition is even made for. — IT DOES NOT REQUIRE A BACKGROUND CHECK. However, the store (Green Tops) routinely calls for one anyway. The Virginia INSTANT background check took nearly 3 hours! — This, for a gun that cannot be shot; I just wanted to use it in classes where I include gun history and development.
    So, WHERE does principle end, and real life begin?

    • When they install grey matter on the heads of the legislators who are on charge of the departments overseeing the background checks and permanently remove said heads from the collective bureaucratic buttocks.

  19. I don’t know whether this is occurring nationally, or just in my State, but the fact that background checks are taking 3 to 5 days for clearance, raises the question of a Federal “waiting period” being instituted WITHOUT legislation.
    They can blame it on increased submissions overwhelming the system, but if I’m reading the legislation that established the system right, their delay violates the terms established by that legislation.
    In a nutshell, they’re breaking the law with the continued delay.

    • If they can get away with it, particularly under Biden, the staff at NICS will be fired or reassigned, as was obviously the original plan, and no more checks will ever be performed, no more guns will ever be delivered. That is the REASON for the 3-day limit in the first place.

  20. Someone is off base here, way off base. Should anyone ask, it is NOT the newly elected congressman. That said, regarding doing away with background checks for firearms purchases, realistically speaking, personal preferences aside, I would say there are four chances of that happening. Fat, Slim, Little and No. Hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think Iam.

  21. The system is definitely broken so while I wish him much success I think the odds are impossible.

    If anything, with Biden/Harris at the helm our second amendment rights are going to be attacked like never before so things will get much worse instead of better. These two wingnuts are attached to the same loose screw.

    As a brand new citizen of Georgia I definitely support his ambitiousness. What I would prefer is for our politicians to start working on constitutional carry. At least it has the potential for success.

    • There are far more important issues than constitutional carry. What good is it if you can’t buy a gun or ammo? Folks need to wake up to what a Kamaltoe/Bitem’ regime will mean to the constitution in general. It will be as if it has no meaning (1st, 4th, & 5th), means something different than it actually does (2nd), and/or has never existed (all the others) depending which argument can best be used to convince the sheeple that it’s for their own good and that we must be protected from ourselves and each other.

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