by The House Rules Committee will issue a rule for HR 38 – Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 – on Tuesday, December 5th. This news was announced on Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk Radio show by Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) on Sunday.
It is expected that the bill will come before the House for debate and a vote starting on Wednesday.
However, as predicted by Rep. Tom Massie (R-KY) the Fixed NICS bill has been merged with concealed carry reciprocity. It is now Title II of HR 38. Massie goes on to say that when the bill hits the Senate, carry reciprocity will be dropped and only the Fix NICS portion approved. Then given different bills have passed the House and Senate it will go to a conference committee who will only report out the Fix NICS portion of the bill. Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) has offered an amendment to the bill being considered in the Rules Committee that would drop the carry portion of the bill.
It should be noted that Massie, despite being chairman of the Second Amendment Caucus, has opposed HR 38 from the start according to Dave Cole who is both a constituent of Massie and a blogger at Black Man with a Gun.
I think it was to be expected that that bills would be combined in that they both dealt with guns and both came out of the House Judiciary Committee at the same time. The NSSF is supporting both parts of the bill including the Fix NICS portion.
HR 4477 – Fix NICS – as it passed the House Judiciary Committee includes a provision to require the Attorney General to provide a report on how often bump stocks had been used in crimes. This would be part of the combined bill. That said, I think the actual instances of a bump stock equipped carbine or rifle being used in a crime will be very few.
