These riders weaken enforcement of our laws by prohibiting the ATF from releasing gun crime gun data to law enforcement and others, prohibiting the ATF from requiring gun dealer inventory audits and requiring the destruction of critical Brady background check records within only 24 hours.
The current NICS is required by federal law -- the Brady Act of 1993 -- to destroy background check request records within 24 hours.
Possibilities include directing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to prod states to submit more records, upgrading technology to automatically notify law enforcement when someone fails a background check and improving incentives for states to submit records.
WSJ: Systemic Gaps Hinder Background Checks for Gun Purchases
Jared Loughner was not in the National Instant Background Check System (NICS) that records the names of people of deemed ineligible to purchase a weapon.
FORBES: The Insane Tragedy of Being Incompetent to Stand Trial AND Allowed to Buy a Glock 19
Yet our laws allow people to buy firearms privately or at some gun shows without going through a background check, and many states remain deficient in transferring important records to the federal database used to conduct background checks on gun buyers.
The Justice Department also has required federal agencies to file reports aimed at improving their procedures for submitting records to the background-check database.
"A background check is only as good as the records in the database, so I think we all have a responsibility to report" mental-health records.
WSJ: Systemic Gaps Hinder Background Checks for Gun Purchases
And the Department of Health and Human Services said it would write new rules to ensure that federal health-privacy law doesn't prevent states from providing records to the background-check system.
Mr. Baker said that at Thursday's meeting, he suggested the administration work on ways to push states to submit mental-health records into the background-check system, an emerging area of consensus in response to Newtown.
There is little sign lawmakers and advocacy groups on either side of the debate are willing to alter their stances, though room for agreement may exist in some areas, such as requiring states to increase their submission of mental-health records to the background-check system used to screen people buying guns from federally licensed dealers.
States are supposed to make mental health records available to the federal background check system and receive more generous Justice Department grants if they do, but many provide little or no such data because of privacy concerns or antiquated record-keeping systems.
But information in the national background check system is incomplete, particularly involving mental health records, investigations have found.
Thune said lawmakers should aim instead at preventing future mass killings by improving mental health programs and increasing the records that state governments send the federal background check system so the checks can do a better job of keeping guns from people who shouldn't have them.
"We need to look at the full range of mental health issues, from early detection and treatment, to civil commitment laws, to privacy laws that needlessly prevent mental health records from being included in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, " LaPierre said in the statement.
It would also require states and the federal government to provide records on criminals and the "violently mentally ill" to the national background check system, addressing a criticism by the NRA and other opponents of gun laws that the existing system lacks substantive information.
The Manchin-Toomey compromise also would require states and the federal government to provide records on criminals and the "violently mentally ill" to the national background check system, addressing a criticism by the NRA and other opponents of gun laws that the existing system lacks substantive information.
Seventeen submitted fewer than 10 records, and four states hadn't reported a single record to the federal background check system, according to the federal investigation, conducted by the Government Accountability Office.
应用推荐