Originally Opposed August 2019

Reaffirmed opposition September 2020

Nebraskans Against Gun Violence "NAGV" reiterates our opposition to HR8, a federal background check bill. Due to the new information from a whistleblower about the nonconsensual hysterectomies of immigrants, it’s time for the gun control movement to loudly denounce any policy that provides tools, funding, or expansions of ICE. 

HR8 contains an amendment to aid ICE agents in their ever-increasing terrorizing of families and children in America. 

We should not be selling out the most vulnerable people in America by enabling police violence. Police violence is what killed Tamir Rice for having a toy gun in a public park and then allowed the police to keep their jobs. NAGV opposes all policy that puts black and brown children in the line of fire of the criminal justice and immigration system while doing nothing to hold gun makers, sellers, and buyers accountable for the death toll and risk they add to our communities. 

People already live in fear, are vulnerable, and are having their children stolen from them by the American government for having the wrong paperwork or perceived to be having the wrong paperwork.

This is a moment for gun control to step up and stand with people of color. The reason the language is unacceptable is not because it may actually keep or not keep an immigrant from purchasing a gun. It's because any language that suggests that someone's immigration status or race makes them more or less dangerous (when we ignore many misdemeanors that are actually predictive of gun violence) reinforces an unacceptable racial hierarchy. The language attached to the bill is using a good policy as an opportunity to declare yet again that immigrants are a menace. That is a destructive message, especially to write into policy. It likely bothers many "legal immigrants" because they realize that the category of "illegal immigrant" is weaponized as a surrogate for race, and so suggesting that "illegal immigrants" are menacing and inherently suspect actually means that immigrants--that is, poor immigrants of color--are.

It's not enough that something simply reduce gun violence, if it is attached to harmful racial categorizing and oppression. If we have universal healthcare for everyone but a specific race, we might get overall better healthcare in the US but it came at an unfair and unacceptable expense of a group of people. If we pass universal background checks and we tack on additional state suspicion and surveillance of "illegal aliens" we might improve the background check system but we do it at the cost of contributing to the unnecessary dehumanization of people who are already vulnerable. It doesn't have to be that way.