Centerfield

More importantly, and something that the gun lobby ignores, is that the DNA testing deters criminals from trying to obtain a gun. This guy got caught; how many crimes were NOT committed because the criminal could not get a gun is the number that is most important, and the one that we cannot answer.

Posted by: EricJP at April 27, 2005 10:16 AM

There are, I assume, plenty of "cold" guns on the black market that criminals can obtain without having to go through a background check. That doesn't mean it doesn't make sense to require background checks. Not all criminals necessarily have access to the black market I guess. I suspect that a lot of the inner city violence is attributable to guns that are floating around outside the legitimate market.

Posted by: MWS at April 27, 2005 10:30 AM

Exactly. The hot-tempered drunk in a small town will get his guns from wal-mart, not the black market.

The people who REALLY want a gun can get one. But when you are hot-tempered and want to act in anger it makes sense to force people to think before getting their hands on a gun.

Posted by: EricJP at April 27, 2005 10:33 AM

This disproves the notion that background checks are worthless because no criminal would be stupid enough to submit to one.

I'm curious, Rick. Who do you think is against the instant background checks? Because the NRA is officially in favor of them, and has been for many years. Indeed, they helped design the current system. Mr. Worrell has a history of not being the sharpest tool in the shed, or entirely rational.

Mr. Rubin said Mr. Worrell had been arrested once since he left New York, on a 1977 burglary charge in Washington.

He was committed to a psychiatric hospital after it was determined that he was not competent to stand trial because of a personality disorder, the lawyer said.

While he was out on bail during the Manhattan trial, he tried to rape a woman in Queens and she was shot during the attack, Mr. Morgenthau said yesterday. Mr. Worrell was convicted in 1975 of attempted murder and attempted rape. But the conviction was reversed on appeal because part of Mr. Worrell's statement to the police had been improperly admitted, the district attorney said.

Mr. Worrell had entered a guilty plea in the Manhattan rape after his conviction in Queens. But he later withdrew that plea after the Queens verdict collapsed. Released on bail in 1978, he dropped out of sight, Mr. Morgenthau said.

I'll bet he didn't mention that on part 12 of his ATFE form 4473. Or his arrests. Or those warrants. By my quick count he had to lie on at least four places on his 4473. That would be a five-year felony count per lie, by the way. Add in "attempt to possess firearm" for another five. Even if they don't get him on the old cases, they can still lock him up for quite a while. Sounds like his defense will be "I forgot!"

Posted by: Tully at April 27, 2005 10:43 AM

Eric, how does DNA testing deter criminals from trying to obtain guns? I fail to see the link.

Posted by: Tully at April 27, 2005 10:44 AM

Making someone stop and think before getting a gun only works once, though, unless a check reveals substantive reason to prohibit puchase _and_ the person is not driven to alternative means of acquistion subsequent to denial. If someone is hot-tempered as a drunk, that means he or she probably sublimates substantial anger while sober. The lowering of inhibitions that comes with drinking results in the anger surfacing. Such a person is fairly likely to procure a gun or some other weapon for such reason. While the anger is sublimated, things like target practice and gun collecting just seem like positive hobbies.

So you might stop such a person once with a background check and waiting period. But since a person who sublimates substantial anger is prone to feeling that having a weapon around is a good idea, sooner or later they have one around WHEN they are mad. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that almost every instance of domestic handgun violence occurs when the shooter already has a gun prior to the precipitating incident, not when the angered person goes out and GETS a weapon later.

Posted by: BK at April 27, 2005 11:08 AM

Tully,

I know that some people are opposed to background checks. I wasn't sure who, so I did a google search, and found a statement from the Libertarian Party

The government's so-called "instant background checks" for gun buyers should be abolished immediately before any innocent Americans are robbed, raped, or murdered while waiting to buy a firearm, the Libertarian Party said today.
The party's demand follows an admission by the FBI that because of telephone and computer glitches, 34% of all gun buyers -- or 1,688 people on Monday alone -- were unable to buy a gun. Meanwhile, just one-quarter of one percent of would-be gun-buyers were rejected because of a criminal record -- meaning that 135 law-abiding citizens were denied a gun for every criminal rejected during the first day of the new program. "How many Americans have just been sentenced to death by bureaucracy as a result of the government's failed instant check system?" asked Steve Dasbach, national director of the Libertarian Party.

The page was missing from the LP site, but here it is in the Google cache. I know the LP is not a serious player in national politics, but its views are frequently seen in the blogosphere, so I thought this case was worth noting.

Posted by: rickheller at April 27, 2005 11:30 AM

Ah, the Liberarians. Yep, they're a pretty vocal bunch. But I note their objection here seems to be against the wait that some experienced because of technical problems though, and not the background checks themselves. This was also the objection of the NRA to the initial waiting-period setup, and there are numerous case histories of domestic violence victims who tried to obtain guns for self-defense, and were killed by thier abusers before the waiting period ended. Waving a restraining order at an abuser is somewhat less than effective.

At the time the NICS was implemented, some of the more "libertarian" elements of the pro-gun crowd objected greatly, on the grounds that the government would use the background check system as a de facto registration system. Thus the NICS law requires the destruction of negative records checks within a short period of time, and bans the government from archiving or otherwise using or maintaining the records of negative checks. I'd call the objectors paranoids, except that the Reno Justice Department was accused of doing exactly what the law prohibited, databasing the records and archiving them.

Side note: I have a common name. Someone with the same name has, sometime in the past, been a Very Bad Boy. As a result, every time I purchase a firearm of any kind I have a very real 72-hour waiting period to face before the NICS can sort it out and verify I am not the Very Bad Boy and can have my firearm. This is no major inconvenience to me personally--it's not as if I don't already have a firearm, or buy guns away from home. But for me and those in the same boat, there is NO "instant" background check.

Posted by: Tully at April 27, 2005 12:25 PM

Rick,

I don't think most responsible gun owners are opposed to reasonable background checks, including finger-printing and DNA, etc....

What most gun-owners object to are...

a) Inefficiancies in the system that can lead to waits of 6 month's to a year for a permit to get proccessed simply because there is no time limit imposed on the responsible agencies to keep them from dragging thier arses as much as they like.

b) Gross inefficiencies in the system, as exemplified by the Libertarien Party statistices which cause an inordinately large percentage of people to be wrongfully rejected simply due to clerical and processing errors.

c) Unneccesary and arbitrary beauricratic hurdles put in place to deny law abiding citizens the right to purchase guns even though they have absolutely clean records. For instance, in NY state, in order to get a handgun permit you have to get 5 private citizens who reside in YOUR COUNTY, are not related to you and have known you for at least 5 years to sign your application or it will be rejected. How would you like to face those kind of arbitrary restrictions in order to get a drivers license or register to vote.... despite the fact that you have an absolutely clean record?

Despite the fact that a single anecdote doesn't really inform very well about the efficacy of background checks, I actualy do support them.... as do most gun owners IF they are performed reasonably.

I actualy like the system in Mass (for longarms) where you undergo an initial background check to get whats called an F.I.D. (Firearms ID). After that whenever you go to purchase a new gun or ammo (or when you're stopped by a game warden in the field) you've got to present the card... and the clerk simply calls in to a database to find out if it has been rescended. If not, you can purchase the weapon/ammo on the spot with no waiting period.

I would favor a system like that nationaly provided that:

1) The only reason you could be denied a permit would be a history of prior offenses.

2) There was a set time limit by which your permit MUST be processed or it would automaticaly approved and issued to you (it can always be revoked later if something turned up after the time limit). Something like 90 days seems reasonable.

3) No arbitrary hurdles placed on the application process (i.e. nothing like NY State's "get your neighbor to sign a permission slip"). All you should have to do is present valid ID (passport/ drivers license), proof of residence and be willing to submit to fingerprint/DNA sample and get your photo taken

4) Reasonable privacy protections were built in. The agency responsible could not use your data for any other purpose. Could not divulge it to private sources (i.e. Nothing like the Texas DMV selling thier database to direct mail marketing companies) and you would recieve notification any time your records were accessed.

Posted by: cengel at April 27, 2005 12:29 PM

cengel, just to be clear--the NICS system rules say that if a records check request is processed as "Delayed" (meaning that "a record that requires more research") rather than "Denied" ("call a cop") that the firearm may then be transferred only at the end of three business days or upon receipt of approval, whichever comes first. And that's what I run into, every single time--they never bother to send an approval, just "Delayed," so I wait three days. I found out about the Very Bad Boy by inquiries through the police department. The feds wouldn't tell me jack. Seems that when they clear a "Delayed" they don't bother to send approvals, just let you wait. For all I know there were federal agents waiting at the store with photos of the Very Bad Boy when I went back, just to be sure I wasn't him.

Posted by: Tully at April 27, 2005 01:06 PM

They do a DNA check as part of the background check?

Posted by: c3 at April 27, 2005 01:51 PM

Tully,

Yup I got that. I actualy don't have that much of an issue with the NICS system, although I'd like to see something better then basing it off a common name where you can run into those sort of misidentification problems. But alot of the state level permit systems are absolutely abysmal in thier processing efficiency. 18 months for a routiene background check isn't uncommon.... and very high rates of false positives due to clerical errors in processing.

Combine that with policies that purposefully place arbitrary hurdles in the application process for the express purposes of rejecting the application so that you can deny the permit to otherwise qualified applicants.

I think I've mention here before that one of my good freinds is an NYPD sergeant. While he has never had anything to do with processing permits, he does know people that do. One of the policies they have told him they are required to follow is to quite literaly check that every letter "i" on the application form has been dotted.... if they find one which is not, they are to mark the form as "incorrectly filled out" and reject it.... even though the applicant might be fully qualified and have provided all the required information.

Again, I don't have any real problem with background checks or permit systems in principle. I don't think most of us gun owners do. I do have a very serious problem with how they are very often put into practice. It seems in many places, the procedures are designed not so much to prevent convicted felons from obtaining guns (which they normaly do through illegal sales anyway) but to prevent as many law abiding citizens with clean records from obtaining them as possible.

Posted by: cengel at April 27, 2005 01:51 PM

Chris,

The NICS system (which is national) just checks your name against a database for warrants/convictions. On top of this, each state has it's own individual system which can range from nothing at all... to a very streneous permit process for even long arms. I haven't heard any states that required DNA samples (although I wouldn't be surprised to see it on the near horizon). However finger printing is pretty common for a handgun in most places I know about.

Posted by: cengel at April 27, 2005 02:01 PM

>>This disproves the notion that background checks are worthless because no criminal would be stupid enough to submit to one.

Well, I think the Darwin Awards alone should have been sufficient enough to refute that notion.

Posted by: Bobby at April 28, 2005 11:41 PM

LOL. Yup, crooks do the dumbest things.

Posted by: Tully at April 29, 2005 12:09 AM

Excellant statement, I think it's high time that we had a national DNA database similar to the national finger print data base at the FBI. Where every person who commits any non-traffic offense would have their DNA sample taken and then posted. This would help convict criminals and also possibly help solve some "cold-cases"

Posted by: Paul at May 2, 2005 02:24 AM