MaverickNH
NES Member
Opinion | Here’s What We Can Do Now About Gun Violence
Fixing the background check system can be done today, but it will take work.
www.nytimes.com
“A more basic NICS flaw involves simply identifying the prospective gun buyer. In 2023, are we really going to continue to allow purchasers to show only a driver’s license, an easily and regularly forged document? Every college student in America who wants a beer has a forged driver’s license. As far back as 2001, investigators from what is now the Government Accountability Office were able to purchase firearms in five states using counterfeit licenses. Today’s technology — and common sense — argues that buyers should be required to provide fingerprints, which would be read at a gun store by a scanner and then searched in the F.B.I.’s computerized fingerprint database, which is operated closely with the states. Such checks can be completed within a few hours. I’ll stipulate that for successful purchasers, all traces of the search would need to be destroyed immediately to satisfy privacy concerns…
Gun policy progressives grouse that other proposed NICS changes could be more important — closing the loophole that exempts gun shows and private transactions from NICS and closing the so-called Charleston loophole, which forces the system to approve gun sales after three days even if investigators need more time to unearth relevant records, as happened in the massacre there. Fair enough. But those issues at this time are politically gridlocked. That’s a fact.
But closing other NICS loopholes is a task within our grasp. Isn’t that more important than watching helplessly as the death toll continues to grow?"
This author, Gordon Wilson, somehow thinks that a better NICS background check system will stop mass shootings. It wouldn’t even make a noticeable dent in garden-variety one-at-a-time suicides and homicides. Fake IDs and fingerprints? A solution in search of a problem. And he’s stealing one of Trump’s taglines!
"What kind of shithole country gives more rights to a gun than to a woman?" Gordon Wilson