The Senate Judiciary Committee has

now almost tripled the funding allocations

included in H.R.2640, the NICS

Improvement Act, to over 2.6 Billion dollars

in the next 5 years, bringing the total

expenditure to something over $7 Billion,

and wrapped the bill into an omnibus

spending package with several other costly

and potentially anti-gun “school safety�?/P>

measures. These actions take the legislation

far beyond any measure of acceptability.

The only reason this bill has moved so far

so fast is NRA’s support. The quickest way

to kill the bill is for NRA to pull their

endorsement, which we strongly urge them

to do at this point.

The Firearms Coalition went out on a

limb by giving the NRA a pass on their

support for H.R.2640 because after

analyzing the bill we concluded that, though

it wasted a lot of money, it did not add any

new anti-gun provisions to the law, but it

did offer some important improvements

which we would like to see implemented.

The Judiciary Committee’s actions

change the picture completely, and open the

door for NRA to bow out. Their original

agreement was to support H.R.2640 as it was

introduced in the House. The Judiciary bill,

with its bloated buget and obvious anti-gun

potential should be a deal-breaker.

There can be little doubt that the “School

Safety�?and “Violence Prevention�?/P>

bureaucracies created by the bill will become

incubators for anti-gun policies, and we

certainly don’t expect John Lott or Gary

Kleck to be included in any of the research

grants funded in the bill.

This pork-laden conglomeration