Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and 14 other House members sent a letter to the FBI and DOJ on Monday demanding that they remove any and all traces of a spurious form the agencies used to intimidate and coerce law-abiding Americans to give up forever their right to own a firearm.
The “unnumbered” form (all legal, official government documents must be “numbered” so that they can be accessed easily) with the chilling title “NICS Indices Self-Submission Form” was signed by an unknown number of American citizens, usually during home visits by FBI agents.
The egregious infringement of Second Amendment rights came to light back in 2019, thanks to efforts by Gun Owners of America (GOA). When pressed by the GOA to answer its demands that it cease use of the illegal form and confirm that it was no longer being used to intimidate Americans, the FBI and DOJ ignored the group.
Then the GOA filed a Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) demand to force the agencies to respond.
Oh, said the agencies, this test of Americans’ gullibility happened back in 2017, and ended in 2019 — nothing to worry about. Just move along.
First, the form. The unnumbered form demands:
Please clearly print your full legal name on the line immediately below:
I, [print your name here], voluntarily request permanent entry into the NICS Indices of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
I UNDERSTAND THAT COMPLETION & SUBMISSION OF THIS FORM WILL RESULT IN DENIAL OF MY RIGHT TO PURCHASE, TO POSSESS, AND TO USE ANY FIREARM.
In addition, I understand that once I am in the NICS Indices, I may not be permitted to withdraw my name or information from the NICS Indices….
I have a mental-health condition that may cause me to: (check all that apply):
_____ Be a danger to myself or others
_____ Lack mental capacity adequately to contract or manage the details of my life
And then, in an Orwellian twist, the form demands that a physician or mental-health professional attest to the citizen’s mental capacity to sign the form!
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called such a demand “ironic”:
There is a certain irony to saying to someone: you have to be mentally competent to sign this statement that says you’re not mentally competent to have a gun!
In its follow-up letter last month, the GOA stated in no uncertain terms that what the FBI/DOJ was pulling was illegal:
The FBI has no statutory authority to create or to use such a form….
Yet the FBI has been using the signing of its form as the sole basis to deprive Americans of their constitutional rights….
The FBI has yet to inform Gun Owners of America of this form’s discontinuance, or of any corrective actions taken to rectify the situation or to restore the rights of those affected.
When there was still no response from either the FBI or the DOJ, firebrand conservative Marjorie Taylor Greene rounded up 14 of her supporters to launch another demand that the rogue agencies come to heel.
She wrote:
Congress has been made aware of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) illegal use of a form entitled the “NICS Indices Self-Submission Form.”
This form was created by FBI personnel and used by FBI agents to coerce and intimidate Americans who were not convicted of any crime into signing away their right to obtain a firearm, a right protected by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution….
We demand immediate confirmation that:
(i) The Department of Justice has identified and taken action to “remove” offending records from any “database” relating to those who have signed the rogue FBI form;
(ii) The FBI (under the authority of the Attorney General) took action to “remove” the offending records from the NICS system; and
(iii) The FBI has halted its use of the illegal and unconstitutional NICS Indices Self-Submission Form.
The “rogue” form smells to high Heaven. It is unnumbered. It was used to intimidate, pressure, and coerce naïve Americans to sign it. There is no way that a citizen, even under pressure, can “sign away” his intrinsic, God-given rights. They may be stolen from him, but he cannot arbitrarily, unilaterally give them up.
That’s the rub: If Americans are unfamiliar with their rights, then they go away, especially under pressure from agents with guns and badges standing over them in their homes.
That may be the “test” the form was developed to conduct.
