Everyone knows the one about what road is paved with ‘good intentions’.

It’s possible the author and co-signers of the bill have good intentions, but this kind of power in the wrong hands is an example of the old line about ‘never make a law that you would not want your enemy to use against you’.

It depends on utterly ethical professionalism that would make the purported incorruptibility of Eliot Ness & the Untouchables pale in comparison and stay that way even in the face of administrations *cough*Obama*cough* that used and abused the powers of the FISA court, the FBI, DOJ and the IRS for corrupt political purposes with not one peep in protest by those employed there.
Not to mention the implications that the 4th amendment protections against ‘unreasonable’ searches

StopHR838.com:
Oppose HR 838 – Wholesale Domestic Surveillance of Gun Owners
[and everyone else]

Stand with us in opposing HR 838, a program for the wholesale domestic surveillance of gun owners!

  • Issue: HR 838 – Threat Assessment, Prevention, and Safety Act
  • Author: Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX)
  • Position: STRONGLY Opposed
  • Information:
    • FPC Policy Memo in response to HR 838: Link
    • **UPDATE** 47 new cosponsors have signed onto this bill as recently as March 2020, bringing the total co-sponsors to 180 with a true bipartisan split of 90 Republicans and 90 Democrats.
    • Now 180 of 435 members of Congress leaves only 38 more necessary for it to pass.
    • HR 838 would permit levels of espionage against the American people not seen since the introduction of the Patriot Act.
    • This Republican-sponsored bill would establish a “Task Force” of 24 unelected, generally unsupervised individuals to oversee a national strategy of monitoring private citizens under the guise of preventing “targeted violence through behavioral threat assessment.”
    • The act would also give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to issue grants to “eligible entities” in order to encourage those entities to hand information to “fusion centers,” which are defined as collaborative efforts of state, federal, and local governments “with the goal of maximizing the ability of such agencies to detect, prevent, investigate, apprehend, and respond to criminal or terrorist activity.”
    • The government could then use the data it collected to build behavioral models based on otherwise harmless behavior, such as purchasing two handguns in one month. That model could then be used to target unwitting, innocent gun owners as potential “threats.”
    • Moreover, HR 838 would authorize the government to spend $25 million a year through 2024… effectively wasting over $100 million of the taxpayers’ money to spy on the American people.
    • The TAPS Act is potentially disastrous for those intent on exercising their right to keep and bear arms, and assuredly catastrophic for the privacy rights reserved to the People under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments.
  • Rep. Scott Desjarlais (R-TN-4) did WITHDRAW his cosponsorhip of this bill just after we brought attention to it last year, according to Congressional record: Link