Gun Sales Halted By FBI Computer Glitch

Anonymous Coward writes: "The Associated Press reports that all gun sales in the U.S. have been stopped [temporarily]. This because of a glitch in the FBI's computers. Hey -- why didn't we think of this before? What a way to reduce crime and stop the bloodshed!" Perhaps one day the entire world will be as safe as Washington, D.C. and other officially disarmed zones.

Comments

Re:YAAABC - yet another argument against backgroun

[Detritus]

This has already been done at the state level. In Maryland, background checks for handgun purchases are done by the State Police. The check is supposed to be done within two weeks. The State Police are infamous for sitting on the paperwork for four to six weeks. The state law says that you can pick up the handgun from the dealer if the State Police have not processed the paperwork within two weeks. In reality, the State Police have threatened gun dealers with reprisals if they let the purchaser pick up the handgun before the State Police process the paperwork. The people who run the State Police are political cronies of the Governor, who is usually a Democrat who would like to ban all guns.

The other tricks that have been used in anti-gun states and localities are:

1. Require the purchaser to have taken a gun safety course that is only offered by the state government. Then make sure that the gun safety courses are rarely scheduled and are made as inconvenient as possible.

2. Accept the paperwork from the purchaser and drop it in the nearest trash can. If the purchaser objects, tell her to fuck off and hire a lawyer if she doesn't like it. A variation on this theme is to always be "out of stock" on the necessary forms.

Actually, NRA is usually dead on with its numbers

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... and the politicians know it. The relatively honest ones will even tell you so.

That's because it is essentially a training and research organization for all issues related to guns - starting with safety. It's the government-recognized regulatory organization for the shooting sports in the US. It trains the people who train the army and the police. Nearly every expert in technical issues related to guns is associated with it.

It got its start as a safety and training organization after the US got into a war and discovered that the draftees no longer knew enough about shooting to make decent (or safe) soldiers. It's focus was training - first safety, then accuracy. And it grew from there.

They are THE experts, and are jealous of that status. So they make a point of giving out information that is as correct as they can manage - to the point of NOT saying things that are very likely correct but not proven beyond controversy (much to the disgust of many of their members and EX members, who have founded other organizations to bring these points to light.)

Lobbying (through their separate ILA organization) is a relatively new thing for them. It started primarily in reaction to the anti-gun movement - which was getting to the point that they realized they were at risk of having nothing left to be experts about. And for a long time the lobbying arm was essentially lobbying for the country-club set, selling out many other sorts of gun-sport enthusiasts (such as the machinegun fans, the gun design hackers, and to some extent those who were mostly concerned with self-defense.) NRA-ILA is agruably STILL the most milksop of the pro-gun lobbying groups.

The anti-gun organizations, on the other hand, have quite a track record of publishing bogus numbers. Sometimes they have SOME basis in fact. Other times they seem made up from whole cloth.

Example: "X number of childeren killed by guns per day/year". Sometimes when the number is worked out against crime stats you find they're counting people up to age 25 as "children". This includes the members of teenage drug gangs, and most other murderers. (Murder is a young man's crime, and most murderers kill members of their own race, class, and age group.) Other times you wonder where the numbers come from, because they exceed the total number of gun deaths. For more reasonable definitions of "children" (like under-12) you'll have a hard time finding a year where the numbers get out of the low single-digits in states like California (with a high crime rate and pushing a fifth of the entire US population.)

They could never keep track of them anyway

[orpheus]

Up to 50% of the legally registered guns in the US are not properly entered in the Federal database, due to incompetence, illegal procedures, and the outright destruction of thousands of legally submitted, but unprocessed records by BATF employees to 'reduce backlog'.

Under the current system, the NFRTR return "No record found" if a registration inquiry is made for one of these guns, which is considered proof of illegal possession, and grounds for prosecution. Dealers and private owners who submitted legal paperwork have gone to jail because the BATF denied knowledge of them.

In other words, any legal gun owner has a 50-50 chance of facing a costly legal case, and possible jail time, because the NFRTR records have been in shambles all along. This is confirmed by the 1995 Congressional of Thomas A. Busey, then Chief of the National Firearms Act Branch of the BATF (see below) "...when I first came in a year ago, our error rate was between 49 and 50 percent"

The BATF has stonewalled and denied for years, but have been forced to admit detail after painful detail (only to deny them all again the following year) A Google search for "Gary Schaible" (no quotes) will turn up dozens of documents and links to further information. (Special Agent Schaible was a BATF spokesman whose testimony to courts and Congress has been full of inaccuracies and outright purjury.)

Anyone who owns legal guns, or believes that registration can ever work should read "Institutional Perjury", an article by Col (ret.) James H. Jeffries, III USMC, Reserve (a retired DOJ lawyer, practicing firearms law in Greensboro, N.C) outlining some of the BATF abuses. (This includes the Busey quote above, but does not cover the famous "Gestapo tactics" incidents)

Reform from within hasn't worked either. Here's as affadavit by Eric Martin Larson of the GAO (Government Accounting Office) regarding systematic errors in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR) and his efforts to have them corrected. This is just one of his many reports and letters to Congress, but after his initial failure, his later reports are painstaking line by line and word by word responses to BATF tetimony and documents, and are very diffficult to read without the originals in front of you

---------------------------------------------
"...quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est."

[roughly: "...swords don't kill people; people kill people."]

-- (Lucius Annaeus) Seneca "the Younger" (ca. 4 BC-65 AD),
_____________

Gun Registration?

[psin psycle]

Being from Canada I'm not up on US gun registration rules. My understanding is that guns don't have to be registered at all. (In Canada I'm pretty sure they don't)

A good reason for not registering guns, is to protect the people who have them in times of civil war. During times of civil war or civil unrest gun owners have the ability to protect themselves from totalitarian governments. They have the resources needed to fight for our freedom. Now, if the governments know who has all the guns, then they can just go out to all the gun owners and collect them.

Doing a background check before selling a gun seems like a good idea to me. Wouldn't want to be handing guns to known criminals. (although I'm sure criminals could get guns anyway) With the FBI doing a background check on every gun purchase, then guns don't need to be registered to know where they are. The FBI will have massive lists of everyone who has ever bought a gun. If the government ever wants to, they can march around and take those guns away with little or no resistance.

The right to bare arms is all about protecting yourself from the government. I don't see how you can do this if the government knows how well you are armed.

Re:Gun Registration?

[|deity|]

The right to bare arms is all about protecting yourself from the government. I don't see how you can do this if the government knows how well you are armed.

That's the way it should be but in America we have all these people that grew up in large urban war zones and they think if they could just get guns away from people it would solve all of their problems. Rather then face the social issues which cause crime governments try to cure the problem by treating the symptoms and don't even do a very good job of that.

I grew up in a rural area and knew how to shoot a gun or a bow, better then many people before I was twelve. No one ever had to worry about me accidentally shooting someone or myself because I was taught firearm safety from the moment I was old enough to recognize what a gun was. I was never allowed to use a gun unless supervised until I was mature enough to be trusted with a gun.

Everyone that knows history knows that the reason that we have the right to bear arms in the US is because the British tried to deny the colonists that right and this made the American revolution that much harder. That right was given to the people of the united states, as a last resort, in case our government ever became tyranical.

Fear the government that fears your guns. It's a true enough statement, what would a just government have to fear from content citizens. Fear the government that fears your computer. Information and weaponry are two of the things that the government doesn't want you to have.

Sorry if I offended anyone but I feel strongly that if people don't want guns then they should refrain from buying them. Don't ask the government to take away my rights because you don't like guns.

Bingo. The reason DC etc. aren't safe is that...

[VT_hawkeye]

...only the outlaws have guns.

Sure, the phrase is trite, but it's damned true. No municipal ban on handguns has ever stopped Joe Crackhead down the street from packing heat, and no law ever will. Laws banning firearms in a pre-armed society like the United States simply mean that only the segments of the society that we can least trust with them will have them. Law-abiding citizens then are unable to protect themselves, and law and order proceeds to break down.

Criminals need to be disarmed, not law-abiding private citizens. Existing laws, if enforced, would take care of the first part; most gun-control measures under consideration would affect part 2 with very little effect on part 1.

BTW - This shut down *was* deliberately engineered

[orpheus]

This type of shut down was deliberately engineered into the system.

The FBI explicitly noted that their proposals would shut down gun sales nationally if any one of the 8-15 "key" record systems did not return a response. This was a "feature", not a bug.

Ordinarily, any "hit" any of these computerized databases will refer your inquiry to a criminal records analyst (currently being hired and trained) and either slow your approval or trigger a formal delay (or denial). Only one condition will 'clear' a sale: All databases queried, all systems responding, no records found. The regulations are explicit: if any one system fails to respond, no retail sales will be 'cleared'.

The FBI determines which computer systems will be linked, and is encouraging various agencies to get the interface specs and consider participating. The official list includes at least:

• National Crime Information Center (NCIC, a compilation of networks and systems whose exact makeup is not readily available; includes wanted persons, missing persons, stolen property, stolen cars, stolen boats, fugitives, more. It reportedly can handle a million automated inquiries per day.)
• Interstate Identification Index (III, a linkage of individual states' records; one state police department reports it goes down almost daily)
• National Instant Check System Index (NICS)
• Department of Defense
• Immigration and Naturalization Service
• Veteran's Administration
• FBI State Records files
• State Department

Other computer-system operators that have been mentioned as part of the database network include: Internal Revenue Service; Drug Enforcement Agency; U.S. Border Patrol; U.S. Customs Dept.; a Protective Orders database (there have been vague references to such a thing, related to domestic violence laws, federal availability is unclear) and of course, not to forget, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms.
_____________

Ah. So the New World Order is upon us.

[MaximumBob]

So they've made their move. First, they "accidentally" halt gun sales. Then, soon, the U.N. Helicopters move in, and the Russian Army soldiers take over our places of business and worship. Registered gun owners are rounded up, and the American government is subsumed in the new world order. So much more efficient than creating crop failures with the U.N.'s weather machine.

Re:please excuse my lack of knowledge

[gad_zuki!]

Most of DC is a ghetto, no laws can fix that. Hot-button gun/anti-gun people will harp endlessly about how its about guns and not about the real social and political issues that help maintain and create a ghetto.

You should be able to get background check FIRST!

[root]

Here's how I think background checks should work:

Go to [local city/county agency] and apply for a background check. They do the check and give you a certificate with your name, SSN, maybe even your photo (so other ID by you is not needed when you use the certificate later), or whatever on it that says you're a clean, upstanding citizen.

It's good for 48 hours or so. Show it to buy 1 or many guns. The seller verfies the cert and your ID (visually only, no logging of info). Or don't use the cert at all and let it expire.

This way, background checks get performed. But no one has to collect information from you to write down or relay to local agencies about how many and what type of guns you bought, if any.

This achieves the purpose of backgrounds checks, thus "stopping criminals" as much as the current system does, right? I'll say it again because this is what the left keeps harping. My plan as described above WILL DO THE BACKGROUND CHECKS AND STOP CRIMINALS FROM BUYING GUNS JUST AS MUCH AS THE CURRENT SYSTEM (which democrats support) DOES!

Will politicians on the left accept this? No. Background checks aren't what they really want. That's just a ruse to dupe the public into supporting the mandates. What they really want to know is exactly who owns what, right down to the serial number so that when the bans come later (like they have so many times before), they can show up at your door and demand [banned make/model of the day].

Did you really think only criminals were being targeted?

Re:Quite frankly...

[rjh]

IANAL, but I do follow the Bill of Rights pretty closely and have performed a fair bit of scholarship on the issue. In the spirit of disclosure, let me say that I possess three firearms and I enjoy participating in the shooting sports.

The overall intent of the Second Amendment is clear: that the citizenry is meant to possess the right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and of the community. This view is fairly universally shared by everyone in the gun control debate, save for those few who claim it only protects sporting purposes. (I cannot grant any credibility to these claims; in all my scholarship on the Bill of Rights, I have never found any hint from any of the Founding Fathers which suggests that any portion of the Bill of Rights is meant to ensure continued sporting activity.)

The real interesting portion comes in how you interpret that original intent. The more militant members of the pro-Second Amendment community (such as the poster I'm originally responding to) claim that all gun control is illegal; the more militant members of the anti-Second Amendment community (such as Sarah Brady) maintain that guns are inherently regulable.

Neither opinion is, in the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, worth a bucket of steaming excrement.

The pro-2A crowd fails to notice US v Miller (I think that's the proper cite), where a man convicted of possessing a sawed-off shotgun appealed to the Supreme Court on grounds that it unlawfully violated his rights. The Supreme Court said that it was unable to see how the possession of a sawed-off weapon contributed to the "well-regulated militia" and therefore received no Second Amendment protection.

Sarah Brady and HCI take US v Miller as proof that all weapons are subject to regulation. This is incorrect; a reading of US v Miller indicates that only those weapons which serve no useful purpose to a well-regulated militia can be arbitrarily regulated. In a strict interpretation of the Court's decision, Miller is actually a vindication of the Second Amendment in that the Court comes very close to outright stating that weapons with military applications (such as fully automatic assault rifles, etc.) possess Second Amendment protection.

So. According to Miller, weapons are regulable if they possess no utility to a militia. It's not as clear a victory for the anti-2A crowd as they make it out to be, and it's not a defeat for the pro-2A crowd, either.

That's the most recent Supreme Court cite which addresses the original poster's "all gun control laws are unconstitutional" argument. Now to take the flip side:

The anti-2A crowd likes to forward the idea that the Second Amendment is a collective right; that is to say, that the use of "the people" refers to the State or Nation as a collective whole and not the people individually. This fails both legal and historical tests.

Legally, to interpret the Second Amendment's use of "the people" in a collective sense would force the Supreme Court to interpret every other instance of "the people" in the Constitution similarly. The Court has refused to do this on multiple occasions, and as recently as a few years ago has referred in passing to the Second Amendment as a right which belongs to individuals.

On the historical side, George Mason (I believe) famously stated "Who, then, is the militia? Now it is the whole of the people." That by itself is a fairly clear statement from the Founding Fathers; considering that no-one at the convention spoke after Mason to condemn that assertion, we may assume it enjoyed widespread popularity.

Moreover, national and state militias composed of citizen-soldiers were known to the Founding Fathers. They were referred to as either "elite corps" or "select corps", depending on which authority they were chartered under (ref: Tennessee Law Review. If the intent was to guarantee the national and state rights to assemble armies and National Guard units, the Amendment would have read "Well-regulated select and elite corps being necessary to the security of a free state..."

So the anti-2A argument that the Second Amendment only protects the Army and National Guard units is obviously, blatantly incorrect.

There is still a great deal of litigation going on in an attempt to clarify exactly what the Second Amendment means. For recent Court decisions, I'd suggest you look at Lopez v US, in which the Court found that Congress had overstepped its Constitutional authority by restricting the possession of firearms near schools. This wasn't a Second Amendment case, per se, but it was a clear indication from the Court that it thought Congress had significantly overstepped its mandate.

Also, check out Emerson v US, coming out of Texas, where the Lautenberg Amendment (which strips people of their Second Amendment rights if they have any misdemeanor domestic-abuse conviction or restraining order filed against them) was overturned. In Emerson, a Federal judge found that misdemeanor convictions and restraining orders were insufficient process of law to strip someone of rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

There are none so blind as those who refuse to see

[addison]

Don't rewrite history - at least in Vietnam vs US, the Vietnamese were armed by the russian. They didn't bought their guns and grenades at their local grocery store.

The NVA, yes. Which, speaking of re-writing history, you might want to check out a tad, before running your mouth. The Viet Cong, the "real" guerillas in the south were much more spottily armed, many times with less than AK-47's. They did a fair amount of damage - and massive amounts to morale - with Punji sticks (sharpened bamboo with the tips smeared with feces), and other technologial wonders. Mines were especially effective - and those are very easy to make.

'm sorry but I live in Europe, and all those crazy Americans so in love with their guns are gun-nuts to me. A gun sole purpose is to kill - plain and simple. You can't use it to repair your car or to cook. Professing the widespread availability of killing-devices is completely insane.

Europe.. Europe. Oh, right, that's the place where my Grandfather went to save your non-gun-owning asses from those gun-toting Germans, right? Are you from the half who's ass we kicked or the half who's ass we saved?

You're missing the entire point of the Second Amendment. Its to keep the government in line. (not invoking Godwin, as I'm not calling anyone a Nazi) - That's why Hitler's first acts were to disarm (especially Jews) the citizenry.

Unlike Europe, we don't put our leaders on a god platform. Most of us anyway. We got our freedom not via royal decree, but by fighting for it, against an opressive, tyrannical government. (Actually, we're taxed more now than then, and the government has far more restrictions).

Well now they do - so the situation CHANGED. And the 2nd amendment is obsolete.

Typical Eurotrash thinking. "I don't understand it, it must me worthless". It wasn't so worthless in 1914-15 and then AGAIN in the 40's, when England was running ads in papers over here, BEGGING for those guns for their defence.

So, its OK to ask/demand that we supply guns when its convient to you - but call us barbarians when you don't.

The right to bear arms was to achieve a goal - it is not a basic human right like free speech.

Again, you misunderstand. Go read some. The "Bill of Rights" is essentially what any _legitimate_ government cannot do. That was the point behind it. It can't censor, remove the ability to resist, imprison without trial... And if you remove those - then according to the thinkers of those who wrote and signed the Consititution - you no longer have a legitimate government.

Well I think hunting is nut too, I mean which mentally sane human could enjoy killing - even animals ?

Somebody damn well better - its impossible for EVERYBODY to be a vegetarian (especially with the animals unchecked)

Are you a vegetarian? If not. SOMEBODY had to kill your fish/chicken/beef/goat/lamb/whatever.

Oh, so if its a low paying job, that's OK? (Never let it be said that most Europeans are enlightened, class-free people)

Disclaimer: I hunt. If you weren't so insulting about something you know nothing about (and so incorrect as to the math behind it) - I'd be willing to explain why.

Again I live in Europe. I'm anti-gun like 99,9% if my fellow citizens. I've never been afraid of getting shot in the streets - the chances of me dying from a gunshot is so close to 0 it is negligeable. I bet you can't says as much...

Which twice now, we've had to wade our troops over there and fight for - and spend a shitload tax money - mine included - keeping armed troops over there so the USSR wouldn't decide that gee, those pesky European countries are making too good an escape haven.. or have things that we want.

Armed Troops. Gee, Golly. Us Crazy Americans.

They think we're barbarians, and we're STILL helping them.

As for the defense of our free stats, we have armies and nukes, and that's enough, thank you.

Oh, well, in that case, mind paying us for your defenses for the last 50 years? Or is that idea obsolete as well?

Addison

For those of you wondering

[DonkPunch]

A few posts from people outside the U.S. are wondering how gun sales work here.

The Brady Bill five day waiting period has apparently been replaced with a computer-based background check. Coincidentally, I bought my second firearm in 6 years last month and was a little surprised by the new procedure. I provided the store with quite a bit of personal info, including driver's license data and, IIRC, my social security number. They made a phone call, passed the information along, and had the result within a few minutes.

Please understand too that the United States is just that -- a collection of states. Each of these states has its own laws pertaining to firearms. Different states have different attitudes towards guns and there is no guarantee that what is legal in one state is legal in another.

I'm afraid the popular worldview of the United States leans towards a free-for-all Wild West where you can buy handguns out of vending machines. It's not like that. We all want to make sure that guns don't get into the wrong hands, there's just disagreement about whose hands are "wrong" and how we accomplish this. The aforementioned instant background check was actually championed by the NRA as an alternative to the five day waiting period (which had no background check at all).

Also, the same restrictions do not apply when guns are transferred from one person to another without dealer involvement. The Clinton administration considers this a loophole because it allows private individuals to buy and sell guns without much in the way of federal regulation. FWIW, my state has some strong laws against making firearms accessible to minors and known felons. I imagine most other states are similar.

The timing for this could not be worse. Given the weekend's planned demonstrations and the Clinton administration's professed desire to pass additional gun legislation, this will get a lot of media attention. I imagine a lot of people will have a hard time believing this is just a computer glitch. I tend to believe it, but I also remember that this same administration was caught "accidently" accessing secret FBI files on political opponents. Ask me in a week if I still believe it.

I'm not a lawyer and not nearly as up on firearms laws as I used to be, so corrections/clarifications would be most appreciated.