Just joined the NRA this week due to the persuasive powers of the many good people on this Forum.
On the phone with them today to confirm my membership and I mentioned to the nice lady on the phone that I agreed with background checks.
Her answer was that they appreciated my input and that they agreed that there were certain people, like the insane and violent felons, who should not have guns.
I suspect that a universal background check will be passed with overwhelming support.
This is an unfortunate development.
Last year in college I wrote a term paper on Concealed Carry as a national policy solution for gun violence. That naturally required me to research the topic , so I plumbed the congressional files on the subject via my university's govt. database and ATF print publications.
What I found was shocking. In addition to juicy F&F testimony which never made it to public knowledge (access to this database requires a paid subscription if you're not a University student) , there was chapter and verse on Senate hearings in the mid 00's regarding the Brady Bill, which is our NICS background check system.
The Illinois State Police, one of the largest LE organizations in America, testified in front of congress that as of 2005 they had a
FIVE YEAR backlog on prohibited files which had yet to be sent to the NICS processing center.
The reason for the backlog? Insufficient staff. The ISP just didn't have the manpower to simultaneously clear the backlog AND patrol the state fighting crime.
This is why bad guys like the VT shooter pass Brady Checks, because in the real world data takes time to transmit. Court documents and arrest records aren't beamed into the NICS system through Scottys transporter in Star Trek. Documents have to be mailed or faxed to the processing center, which then has to tell the computer that
PERSON X is on the national 2nd Amendment list. If a bad guy robs a bank on Friday , the NICS system won't know about it until the following Tuesday morning-IF the LE Jurisdiction where the crime took place even has the manpower to send the data to begin with. If there's a backlog, forget about it. The bad guy will have months or even YEARS during which he or she can legally buy a gun just like anyone else.
Thus, the Brady System is like the TSA-a paper tiger, a fraud , a practical joke on the gun owners and law abiding in America played for the amusement of careerist politicians and their constituents, both of whom are ignorant of history, common sense, and the physical laws of the universe.
Expanding the Brady System to all gun sales is akin to authorizing the TSA to search people every time they get into their car so as to prevent auto theft.
