Gun Rights Group — Not NRA — Backs Background Check Bill

A group billing itself as the second-largest gun rights group in the country has bucked the NRA in backing the Manchin-Toomey bill before the Senate, Politico reports.

Not only has the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms backed the bill by Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., its leader is claiming partial authorship.

The group’s website makes no mention of support for the bill, a substitute for one proposed by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., but its Facebook page links to a story on Examiner.com in which the group’s chairman, Alan Gottlieb, says he and the group’s lawyer/lobbyist helped write it.

“Just so you all know, I am in support on the Manchin-Tooney substitute bill to knock out the bad Schumer Background Check bill,” Gottlieb is quoted as writing in an email to Second Amendment supporters and the media. “I and our CCRKBA attorney lobbyist had a hand in influencing and writing parts of it.”

The bill would call for a 15-year prison sentence for anyone who tried to use information from background checks to create a federal gun registry, Gottlieb said.

Among other changes, the bill exempts the sale or transfer of guns between friends and family members from background checks, and restores rights of veterans to own weapons, Gottlieb said.

In a video posted by Daylight Disenfectant, Gottlieb calls the bill a “Christmas tree” that they hung “a million ornaments” on. He says those who oppose the bill don’t know how good it is for gun rights because they weren’t in the room watching it being written as his staff was. He predicted it will take the opposition by surprise and suggested its true contents be kept close to the vest for as long as possible.

“These advances for gun rights cannot be made unless we win the Senate vote on Tuesday to substitute it for the current Schumer draconian background check that is in the bill at this time,” Gottlieb wrote in the email. “The gun grabbers have stepped into our trap. It will be fun to see Obama forced to sign it!”