The American Civil Liberties Union must be happy the weekend is almost here – they’ve taken on Jesus and Sen. Harry Reid in the same week. The ACLU has expressed serious concern regarding the civil liberty ramifications of the Nevada Democrat’s new gun control legislation.
ACLU’s Chris Calabrese, a lobbyist, told the Daily Caller on Wednesday the organization feels the background check measures in the Democrat’s new bill seriously infringes on the privacy rights and civil liberties of Americans.
Calabrese said the outrageous organization is concerned with the specific outlines of the background checks, not that they condemn them.
“If you’re going to require a background check, we think it should be effective,” he said. “However, we also believe those checks have to be conducted in a way that protects privacy and civil liberties. So, in that regard, we think the current legislation, the current proposal on universal background checks raises two significant concerns.”
The ACLU’s issues with the bill are that records are handled differently between private purchases and “purchases made through licensed seller,” and the White House may develop a national registry with overly-personal information about gun buyers.
“Under existing law, most information regarding an approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] check now,” Calabrese told the Daily Caller, “and almost all of it is destroyed within 90 days.”
He added, “Unfortunately, we have seen in the past that the creation of these types of records leads sometimes to the creation of government databases and collections of personal information on all of us. That’s not an inevitable result, but we have seen that happen in the past, certainly.”
Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) contributed to Reid’s bill, the Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013 (S 649).
