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Unilateral Background Checks—STOP CROOKS AND CRAZIES Leave Innocent people alone. Halt “universal” gun registration. And shave the cost.
Is the current "universal" system even working?
by Alan Korwin
April, 2016 Dillon's Blue Press. PHOENIX, Ariz. -- Gun owners, rights activists, gun makers, even our much-maligned lobbyists have no desire to see criminals, muslim jihadis and crazies walk into stores and buy guns—despite terrified ravings to the contrary from progressives and the “news” media. Only unhinged individuals would even suggest such lunatic-fringe ideas. Yet the way the FBI/NICS background check system is set up to stop bad guys it creates unconstitutional infringements on privacy and dangerous federal power grabs that threatens our liberty. That’s why it earns such fierce resistance. Fix that and we’d all get along better, maybe. New demands from left-wing partisans for so-called “universal” background checks, which would be even worse, would put the entire universe of legal gun owners’ identities into federal agents’ hands. That’s tyrannical and gun owners want it stopped. Can background checks be done and still maintain a privacy wall between honest retail gun sales and madmen seeking arms? Yes. Unilateral background checks work like good old fashioned Wanted Posters, but with digital accuracy and efficiency, and should replace the dangerous left-wing “universal” gun-owner registration scheme. Instead of your neighborhood gun dealers sending millions of names of innocent people every month to the FBI, the FBI should simply send the list of prohibited people to the dealers, where they can be checked locally. Easy.
The BIDS Alternative
The FBI has little interest in the BIDS system for unilateral checks because it represents a huge reduction in their power. BIDS would cost 90% less because the Justice Dept. wouldn’t need the expensive army of FBI staffers who do the checking. Our firearm stores would simply do it when they make sales. The FBI claims they have to check the NCIC and III criminal databases, but the NICS Index of prohibited people is the mainstay of the system. The tiny percentage of difficult cases and unresolved dispositions can be handled by a skeleton FBI crew. No bureaucracy wants to see its staff—and its budget—shrink, even if freedom grows as a result. Bureaucratic stonewalling would be a serious problem to overcome, and there are some technology issues as with anything of this size, but it can be done and is worth the fight. That way, millions of innocent names don’t go to Big Brother each month. That way, like wanted posters, it leaves decent people alone. Bad guys are identified. Innocent people are not. The federal government doesn’t get to register every innocent American gun owner. The great obstacle in the radical left-wing infringement plan, which Americans rightfully resent and reject is eliminated. Progressives would stop stopping progress at last. The party of obstruction—the democrats—would be exposed for their true motives: They don’t want BIDS because it doesn’t gather everyone’s names, which is their main (though publicly unstated) goal. If crime reduction was really their goal, they would be doing something about it even under NICS. They staunchly refuse. Everyone whose rights they deny (without trial or due process by the way) are just put on the street after denials, with their money, looking to buy a gun. How many get one? They don’t know. Or care, if evidence is the gauge. The left wing’s real problem is that unilateral checks would show that “universal” checks are a scam. Progressives, leftists, liberals, democratic socialists—whatever these gun-fearful folks call themselves these days—don’t really want to stop crime with “universal” checks. They want your names.
The Emanuel Doctrine
We can see this clearly because they find and release every murderer, escapee, fugitive, felon, sex offender, rapist, arsonist, armed robber, illegal alien, muslim jihadi, spousal abuser and other prohibited person they spot through their cherished NICS system. But they do gather a huge list of innocent people buying guns, more than one million every month, and they desperately want that. That’s been the goal of the billions they’ve spent on this thing all along. BIDS forces recognition of that. Although they never admitted this publicly either, insiders understood that a primary motivation of government support for the Brady bill was not to implement background checks for gun purchases. It was to secure the quarter-billion dollars in funding the Justice Dept. hadn’t been able to obtain to build a computer capable of checking out every American from a single FBI location. Without the shouting about guns, the money would never have been allocated. A computer that size and scope doesn’t fit on a desktop. It sits on a sprawling FBI campus in Clarksburg, W. Va., a sleepy little town two hours south of Pittsburgh. It’s a crown jewel in the government’s arsenal of population control tools. It needs a staff to run it. [Editor, see image links at end] If we switch over to unilateral checks, your gun-ownership information stays safer and more private, the way the Founding Fathers envisioned uninfringed gun ownership. Our Founders would freak out if they saw you waiting in a store for some federal agent back east to “allow” you to buy a firearm. All the FBI has to do is maintain the prohibited-people list—still a big and important job—and keep the dealers informed. The FBI becomes our servants, not our masters. The list can be encoded, encrypted, password protected, updated, even hour-by-hour if they wish. No, they’re not interested in a unilateral background check, because that would only stop every criminal in America. That doesn’t serve their purpose. They want their “universal” system, to collect the universe of gun owners in America—you. Sure, they claim they delete the records, and statute is clear in requiring it, (18 USC §922(t), but they won’t allow a public audit (they claim a government audit keeps them honest). Trust, but don’t verify? In direct personal interviews they make assurances that they strictly comply with the law. Look at their campus—how would you audit that? Besides, when designed in the 1990s, their system reportedly checked records of foreign agencies to be thorough, which made sense. According to reliable sources back then, that included Canadian authorities, Israeli Mossad, Scotland Yard, and more (they currently deny this). Those agencies are under no requirement to erase anything, so records of those inquiries would reside there. The public, even Congress, has little way to provide assurances it doesn’t. We trust our national network of licensed firearms dealers (50,000 stores, 130,000 licensed dealers) to sell guns and ammunition day in and day out. Surely we can trust them with the names of hardened criminals who can’t buy guns, right? Any misuse of the information is a serious crime, you lose your business license and face prison. No checking out your daughter’s boyfriend. Is the government afraid this will save money? (It will.) Is the problem it will be more efficient? (It is.) Do they fear losing all those jobs they created with their “universal” system collecting your name every time you shop? (They do.) Is it a privacy problem for the public-record list of hardened criminals (they will raise that red herring, mark my words). It’s time to expose the boondoggle. It’s time to stop even the impression that the FBI is recording the names of every gun buyer, as they knowingly gather the data daily. It’s time for the money-saving, highly efficient, vast improvement of unilateral background checks, the BIDS system, and stop progressives from standing in the way of progress and keeping America free.
Alan Korwin’s website features plain-English books on state and federal gun laws for the public, and more common sense like you just read. He invites you to write to him or see his work, at GunLaws.com, where you can get books and DVDs that help keep you safe.
Editor: images here, or just search Google for: Addendum 6/8/16 Hi, Alan, I want to be able to back up the following: "We can see this clearly because they find and release every murderer, escapee, fugitive, felon, sex offender, rapist, arsonist, armed robber, illegal alien, jihadi, spousal abuser and other prohibited person they spot through their cherished NICS system." I'm sure we're going to get flak about saying they find and release EVERY… Thanks,
Good catch, Mark, my oversight.
14,409,616 NICS checks total in 2010 76,000 denials of firearms referred to an arm of ATF (0.00527, or 0.053%, about a half percent) [followup email, 0.53%, not 0.053%] BUT: "...90 percent were not deemed worthy of further investigation while another 4 percent turned out to be incorrect denials." "...another quarter turned out to be a case of mistaken denial and most of the rest had no prosecutorial merit." "In the end, 62 cases were referred for prosecution, but most were declined by prosecutors or dismissed by the court. Out of the original 76,000 denials, there emerge just 13 guilty pleas." 13 out of 14,409,616 = 0.000000902 (virtually none) The Washington Post, in typical fashion, says Sen. Lindsey Graham's complaint that 'no fugitives have been prosecuted' after gun background checks is "a matter of opinion." I can write up this fascinating exposition of the situation, perhaps as a footnote, or just use the word virtually. Thanks again for catching that same mistake Sen. Graham made, that the Washington Post hung him up for, and would have attacked you for as well no doubt (3 Pinocchios). Alan.
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