Slashdot Mirror
Federal Gun Control Requires IT Overhaul
New submitter Matt Slaybaugh writes "John Foley at InformationWeek has an editorial saying that the missing piece in the new gun control legislation is adequate data management. 'President Obama introduced 23 executive orders on Jan. 16 aimed at reducing gun violence through a combination of tougher regulation and enforcement, research, training, education and attention to mental healthcare. Several of the proposed actions involve better information sharing, including requiring federal agencies to make relevant data available to the FBI's background check system and easing legal barriers that prevent states from contributing data to that system.' But concrete plans are needed now to improve the current poor system of data collection and sharing. Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel's Digital Government Strategy, introduced in May, 'defines an IT architecture and processes for sharing digitized content securely, using Web APIs and with attention to protecting privacy. ... Unfortunately, on top of the data quality issues identified by the White House, and the FBI's and ATF's outdated IT systems, there's a lack of transparency about the systems used to enforce federal gun-control laws.'"
Is it any surprise that the Federal govt. has knee-jerked and not thought through the repercussions, or the real-world applicability of their solutions?
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Yeah, right.
So when's Obama going to give up his armed Secret Service agents? Oh, wait. He's never going to do that.
When's Rosie O'Donnell and other anti-gun celebrities going to give up getting "we're-special-and-you're-not" gun-carrying bodyguards? Oh, wait. They're never going to do that.
But they sure as hell expect US to want to protect ourselves and our children with words that say "No guns allowed."
And then call the people with guns AFTER something bad happens
Infringe as per google: Act so as to limit or undermine (something); encroach on: "infringe on his privacy They've been infringing upon us for years, this is just even more infringement.
When you split a sarcastic statement between the title and the text of your comment, it's almost like an accidental(?) troll. But yep, if requiring a person be licensed to have a firearm doesn't violate the right of the people to keep and bear arms, then requiring newspapers, churches, assemblies of people, etc., to be licensed doesn't violate their First Amendment rights.
And since the courts do in fact seem to be starting down that line regarding our First Amendment rights...the Second Amendment rights become that much more important.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The real problem is not polution, corruption, gun-control, or any one specific issue. It is a matter of enforcement. I think at this point that if congress were to read through every federal law on the books that they would be unable to complete the read-through in a years time (not counting all of their vacations and holidays). If the current laws are not enforced how is creating more going to solve anything? There is an industry around creating new laws. This is wrong at a fundamental level. Coincidentally it is the same problem with the medical situation. There is an entire "medical-billing industry": middlemen paid to shuffle papers with no real gain for the people footing the bill.
Should we thus put microphones up everywhere to monitor speech? After all we can effectively monitor everything done over computer and phone communications. Why not have multi-directional highly sensitive microphones put up to record all speech? Effectively SETI but for us (and minus the intelligence part.) Search for Intra Terrestrial Terrorism. We wouldn't be infringing on anyone's free speech after all, just listening - if anything that is enhancing everyones freedom!
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
The government needs to dump what they've got and start from scratch. But all I can say is good luck.
They can barely set up a site properly, let alone build and manage a sophisticated database. Visit most government sites and they're a convoluted maze of poorly organized content. And federal government sites are halfway decent, state and municipal sites are many orders of magnitude worse. I can't comprehend how the companies that build that junk remain in business.
Well, actually I can. I know people IT and web who've done work for my state and it's an absolute nightmare. It's the sort of thing that they've consistently said they'd never do again. I think the few willing to do it haven't so much figured out how to work through the red tape so much as exploit the system for personal gain. It doesn't help when you're dealing with government workers who are total incompetents, managing things they know nothing about. But as long as they look productive they don't have to worry about accountability.
And that's part of the problem. You still have to deal with the human component. I know someone who was self-employed and struggling. Because of it he was eligible for free health insurance through the state so he applied successfully. There's no copay or anything because, as was explained to him by a social worker, even if they only charged a dollar most people on the program would still refuse to pay. The expectation is that it all should be free.
So a year in he lands a decent job and is no longer eligible for the program. He gets in touch with the worker to cancel the plan. Over the next year he continues getting plan updates. They even switch providers for him. The state partners with various companies and over so often they have to switch providers. The user is supposed to pick a plan or risk cancellation. But apparently if you ignore all the paperwork they take care of it all for you. So here he was calling multiple times before they finally dropped him. Someone with fewer scruples could have milked the plan indefinitely. And in fact, I know of some people who've done just that.
That's just one example. I have others. With this level of incompetence how can we expected any program to be implemented and managed properly? The existing program should already be addressing these problems. No one ever assess and analyzes. It's always that we need something even bigger and more complex couple to the idea that more money can fix any problem. Then when the next grand program fails they'll just start the cycle all over.
I'm not suggesting we don't need an overhaul. I'm simply pointing out that it's almost certainly going to be a financial morass resulting in something no more effective than we've got now.
I suspect the problem of establishing interoperability among the government agencies is harder than it sounds. The DoD has been working on getting their stovepiped systems to talk to one another for 20 years. Remember the big push after 9/11 to get all the first responders talking on the same radio frequencies? Hundreds of millions spent, and still no results. So "incompatible computer systems" doesn't sound to me like a minor hurdle that can be overcome with a couple years' R&D. It sounds more to me like "doomed from the outset."
Possibly our best defense against Big Brother is that the government adopted all its major IT systems before the Internet was a household word.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
....people who can make a pile of money from greater IT investment, advocate greater IT investment. /facepalm /news
-Styopa
Prosecutions for violating existing federal gun laws are down significantly under Obama. Joe Biden said that they do not have the time and manpower in order to pursue violations of the law on background checks. If the Administration does not enforce existing laws, why should we believe that any new laws will make any positive difference?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
And also, just as unauthorized.
Prohibition WRT alcohol required a constitutional amendment. Marijuana, for some magical reason, did not. Why? I mean, other than government out of control? Where did this magical power to step on our liberties come from?
The 2nd amendment is explicit: The government is forbidden from infringing upon our right to keep and carry arms. They are engaged in applying unauthorized power to the citizens with every law that infringes on the right to keep and carry arms, of which there are a huge number.
Any law that interposes licensing, restrictions on carrying (whether open or not), or restricts any particular arm, is completely outside the scope of the government's legitimate authority.
The constitution is the highest law in the land. The government is engaged in breaking that law.
Welcome to government by fiat.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"making existing background checks more effective by encouraging (not ordering) government entities to share information"
The part that concerns me about that is the possibility that Homeland Security's "terrorism watch list" or TSA "No Fly List" will end up being incorporated into the NICS database. I haven't heard about this specifically in the latest batch of orders, but the government proposed it at least once previously.
The problem is that people can be arbitrarily added to these lists and there is no legal process by which to remove yourself. A law abiding citizen with no history of crime or mental illness could just be added to the list for whatever reason. That's BS. If we're going to prohibit people from purchasing or owning firearms, it should be done only through due process of law, not by some obscure and arbitrary bureaucratic decision making.
I just wanted to point out some really obvious things
There is an wide chasm between "Non compos mentis" and "mental health issues". Note that the 2nd term isn't "mental health disorder" it's "mental health issues".
How will "mental health issue" be defined for this purpose? Is a prescription for antidepressants sufficient for gun confiscation, or does it require a diagnosis of an actual disorder. Will a judge be involved in the ruling, or will the police make the determination? Will it be "confiscate first, check later"?
Will a doctor's word - patient "X" is on antidepressants - be sufficient for the police to come and confiscate arms? Will the confiscation last forever, or can a person be deemed "cured" and get their guns back? Will this cause people to hide real mental health issues for fear of having their property confiscated?
Many people with "mental health issues" have broken no law. This means the government will be taking away the rights of a group of people based on a warm-fuzzy "it seems like the right thing to do" attitude. We could just as easily restrict blacks from having firearms because blacks commit more crimes than whites in this country.
People make a lot of hay over the "social contract". It turns out that our ancestors made a social contract which was explicitly put down on paper and said that you could have your centralized government so long as the people can keep guns.
You cannot break that contract directly, you have to change the constitution to do it - that's the rules, and everyone has to abide by them. If you don't believe in the constitution, then the social contract is null and void, and we might as well do away with the federal government.
And where is state governance in all this? What if some states (Texas comes to mind) simply don't want to restrict gun control in this manner? The constitution explicitly states that the federal government can't take this right away.
And finally, you know that this will be abused by law enforcement to extreme levels. Cops will be grabbing guns off of everyone they see claiming "well, he looked like he had mental health issues". Prosecutors will dig up any thin hint of a mental health issue to justify keeping the guns, and no one will be able to get their property back - ever.
This whole issue is a train wreck waiting to happen. Especially since, given the statistics, it will cause more children to be hurt (on average) than relaxing restrictions.
Ammunition is simple:
- turn cases on a lathe (a variable-speed woodworking lathe will do --- brass is soft)
- bullets are easily cast (you can use a hot plate as a heat source)
- gunpowder is simple kitchen chemistry (I used to make black powder when I was a kid)
- primers can be made from strike-anywhere matches (granted, these are not quite as easy to come by these days, but they haven't been outlawed yet, and when they do, there're other alternatives)
People who think gun control can be made to work don't understand guns.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Be careful what you ask for. There are bullets not made of lead. Such as the famed "cop killer bullets."
The problem is that people can be arbitrarily added to these lists and there is no legal process by which to remove yourself. A law abiding citizen with no history of crime or mental illness could just be added to the list for whatever reason. That's BS. If we're going to prohibit people from purchasing or owning firearms, it should be done only through due process of law, not by some obscure and arbitrary bureaucratic decision making.
Exactly.
Anyone who doesn't believe that this will inevitably be used to effectively criminalize firearm ownership has obviously failed to learn from history.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Considering more people die by blunt force trauma with criminal intent than by guns. Your statement has no merit.
Om, nomnomnom...