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Unresolved Login Issue Prevented Florida 'Concealed Weapon' Background Checks For Over a Year (tampabay.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Tampa Bay Times
For more than a year, the state of Florida failed to conduct national background checks on tens of thousands of applications for concealed weapons permits, potentially allowing drug addicts or people with a mental illness to carry firearms in public... The employee in charge of the background checks could not log into the system, the investigator learned. The problem went unresolved until discovered by another worker in March 2017 -- meaning that for more than a year applications got approved without the required background check.
During that time, which coincided with the June 12, 2016 shooting at Pulse nightclub that left 50 dead, the state saw an unprecedented spike in applications for concealed weapons permits. There were 134,000 requests for permits in the fiscal year ending in June 2015. The next 12 months broke a record, 245,000 applications, which was topped again in 2017 when the department received 275,000 applications... There are now 1.8 million concealed weapon permit holders in Florida.
The employee with the login issue, who has since been fired, "told the Times she had been working in the mailroom when she was given oversight of the database in 2013. 'I didn't understand why I was put in charge of it.'"
During that time, which coincided with the June 12, 2016 shooting at Pulse nightclub that left 50 dead, the state saw an unprecedented spike in applications for concealed weapons permits. There were 134,000 requests for permits in the fiscal year ending in June 2015. The next 12 months broke a record, 245,000 applications, which was topped again in 2017 when the department received 275,000 applications... There are now 1.8 million concealed weapon permit holders in Florida.
The employee with the login issue, who has since been fired, "told the Times she had been working in the mailroom when she was given oversight of the database in 2013. 'I didn't understand why I was put in charge of it.'"
Government staffing has issues. Who was this employee related to? Patronage lives at all levels of government.
Employee's story doesn't make sense, dates don't line up. Who was her supervisor? What's his/her version? Next supervisor up?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Since each state should be having their sales verified through this database, the FBI should be able to audit how many queries are made per state, to validate that they match the number of sales being made. If there is a significant discrepancy, then the state should be investigated for failure to follow procedure. This should be EASY to catch, and will help find the points where failures are occurring, like this.
All those concealed carry permits without background checks? It's an authoritarian's worst nightmare!
How many murders and shootings were committed by those unvetted CCW holders? I will guess zero.
Match the sales of what? This was for concealed carry licenses, not buying guns. The background checks for those are done by dealers, who are auditable and who face very strong penalties for not doing it right.
of politicians and government. Once they pass them they for the most part don't care about whether they work, are effective, harmful, who gets hurt or are properly implemented by the government bureaucrats. They got their bullet point/talking point for campaign ads/tools to attack their political opponents and they just move on, problem solved.
;)
I also want to say again, about gun violence, what is it about our culture and society that creates individuals who think gun violence is a good way to get their fame on social media/solve their problems.
Maybe the real issue is not directly the gun (a tool) but the person and their state of mind along with our culture and society! Lets be open minded and at least ask the question.
Just my 2 cents
Employee is given a task, then doesn't do it, because cannot.
Boss doesn't find out for over a year that employee didn't do the assigned work.
My first thought is that it isn't really fair to fire the employee for that, but that really depends on whether she made clear to her boss she couldn't do the job. And why not give her the old job back, was she no good at that? If not, why give her oversight of this database? Do explain that one, please.
But the boss not finding out about it for over a year? Or the boss' boss? And so on? That's inexcusable. They're supposed to know that sort of thing, that's their job. So if any heads are to roll, I expect at least several levels of middle management to start sprouting vacancies. If not, the firing of managers shall continue until the idiocy stops.
Right up to the governor if necessary. Go on, have a full-blown election with only new candidates over the firing of an ex-mailroom clerk. Or what is this democracy thing for, anyway?
Since each state should be having their sales verified through this database, the FBI should be able to audit how many queries are made per state
IMO: When a successful background check is made; the national database should issue a Background verification control number which MUST be recorded by the states in their own databases and must also
appear stamped on a concealed carry permit; A permit without the correct control number is not valid. The control number can be looked up later and will match to the personal information that was used to query the background database.
If the background database info of that person changes later, for example an arrest or conviction is added, then the state will be sent a notification and be required to revoke the concealed carry permit.
And yet the CDC did exactly that research. https://www.nap.edu/read/18319...
Guess what? Guns help prevent crime more than they cause it. And we're not talking about indirect deterrence here where knowing a populace is armed keeps potential criminals scared. We're only talking about direct defensive uses of firearms.
If you can't be arsed to read the whole thing, Guns and Ammo summarized it here http://www.gunsandammo.com/pol...
The Dickey Amendment restricts only the CDC (e.g. not the entirety of the government), only restricts them from advocacy or promotion of gun control (e.g. not the study thereof), and only places that restriction on the specific portion of their funding earmarked for injury prevention and control (e.g. not their entire budget). Perhaps you should actually read the damn thing sometime?
Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong. But, if you choose to do that, be prepared to explain how they've actually been able to legally conduct such research (this from 2013) and even as recently as 2015.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Inconsistent reporting standards across decades from all 50 states can result in a suspected false positive, where a human will need to go an investigate the information to either permit or deny a NICS sale, like if you happen to share a name and birth year with a person who committed a crime in your state
Connecticut's gun laws after Sandy Hook reduced gun killings by over 40% across the board.
And your cite? Does not say "Guns help prevent crime more than they cause it. " at all.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for unrestricted gun access, but let's not muddy the waters with BS. If we as a society want these rights to guns, we have to pay the price and know - with open eyes - the costs.
I keep hearing about this supposed loophole, but all I see every time I go to a gun show is licensed dealers performing background checks as required by law and the odd exempt private party transfer (except in states where private parties are required to transfer through a dealer, in which case the background checks still happen) -- and private party transfers can occur anywhere, not just at gun shows. In fact, most gun shows don't allow private sales at all, so they're actually less likely to occur at gun shows than they are in a private residence.
The real loophole is what I like to call the "dark alley loophole", wherein stolen and/or smuggled guns are sold out of some guy's trunk in a dark alley. Not legal in the slightest, but it's where the guns used in the vast majority of crimes come from.
Nobody is using a weapon with their name on it to commit a crime, and nobody is willingly transferring a weapon with their name on it to someone else who may use it to commit a crime without ensuring that the transfer has been recorded. Too much liability.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Non-licensed gun dealers at gun shows would be illegal. Being a non-licensed gun dealer anywhere is illegal. Are you referring to private sales?
The pattern for everything I've looked at so far:
Guns and Ammo summary: X!!!!
nap.edu report (title: Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence): There are studies that say X, there are some that say not X, sometimes studies of X do not take into account Y. Further research is needed.
To pit it mildly, it looks like Guns and Ammo is omitting a lot of the context from the NAP report. It's almost like they have an agenda or something.
Yes, I'm referring to gun dealers who go to shows and claim to be "private sellers".
If you've ever been to a gun show, you've seen them. As a lifelong gun owner,, I've actually purchased guns from these characters.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If you've ever been to a gun show, you've seen them. As a lifelong gun owner,, I've actually purchased guns from these characters.
So you're the one you've been warning us about for years? Huh
And you didn't turn in either the ones you thought were illegally dealing guns, or yourself? Huh.
So your years of complaints and invective on the matter boil down to, "Our system is soooo f-----d! Why the hell isn't anyone arresting me for what I did?"
It seems we've found something that you and the NRA agree on.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
And I think you need to be deported for thinking it's ok to require a permission slip to exercise rights. We don't have to get a permit to speak, or worship, or not be thrown in jail without a trial. Fuck you and your permit bullshit.
If there is no law preventing background checks for private sales
First mistake. There is no law requiring them. Not only that, as a private citizen and not an FFL licensed dealer, you actually can't perform the background check. Because there's a law preventing it...
how do you know there is a liability?
Second mistake: misunderstanding. Let me clarify. The liability doesn't come from selling the gun, it comes from the fact that you are the last owner with a background check assigned to the serial number of that gun, which means the cops will be at your door after a trace if that gun is found to have been used in a crime. If "I sold that thing years ago" with no proof was a valid defense, every perpetrator of a gun crime would have an easy get out of jail free card.
How can there be a liability if nothing illegal was done?
Just to make sure you get it this time, I'll clarify in a different way. The transfer itself might not be illegal, but what the next person does with it might be. If you bought the gun through an FFL dealer, or in a state that requires an FFL to handle private party transfers, you had a background check run and the serial number of that firearm is on that background check. If no background check is done for the transfer and law enforcement was not made aware of the transfer when it occurred (meaning who it was transferred from and to, with copies of ID), as far as the law is concerned it's your gun.
Can you cite an example of someone privately and legally selling a perfectly working gun to an adult and then losing a lawsuit because of what that person did with it?
A lawsuit? No. Criminal charges? Spend 30 seconds on Google yourself.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Completely compliant, thank you very much, including with California Penal Code 26150 and 26155.
I believe in citizenship and the rule of law and punching Nazis and all that good American stuff.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Funny, because for over 20 years, the CDC was prohibited from studying gun violence. Yes, the NRA has bought legislation that prevents any money the CDC gets from going into gun violence research.
So obviously the CDC did not conduct the research, because they're not allowed to. They're allowed to contract it out for no money, which basically means really self-interested researchers (i.e., industry) gets to write an opinion piece about it.
Your article is dated to 2013, and the CDC has not conducted any gun violence research since 1996 (Dickey Amendment).
And all my article states is the AMA is lobbying for its appeal since 2016, because one really cannot make any sort of judgements without proper research. Of course, the NRA opposes this, almost as if they're worried about the real truth, that it might be the next cigarettes, or leaded gasoline, or climate change, or something. Or it might be because their whole set of mottoes end up being lies...
So they're not allowed to do any research if the conclusion is supportive of gun control. Which is something they won't know until they start the research. So... under what circumstances do you think the CDC can actually do research given there's a non-zero chance that if they do it, they might accidentally violate the law if it turns out it shows that gun control is positive in some way?
Really, seriously, think about what you're saying before posting. The the fact that the CDC doesn't do any research into gun violence, and that this is a direct result of virtually every sane person's reading of the Dickey Amendment, is well known.
As for your two examples, congrats. One is a meta article about possibly being able to study gun violence in some ways. The other is an article that that doesn't research gun violence, but instead is oriented towards determining whether some predetermined "solutions" that aren't gun control, because that would be illegal, might also help solve gun violence.
I'm not exactly itching to see a waste of space like the AWB re-introduced, but even I can see that arguing the CDC has the ability to research gun violence has been crippled to the point of uselessness by the mandate forbidding it effectively know the answers aren't gun control before it asks the questions. If we can't have a sane conversation about gun control that involves good, unbiased, information, then we can't have a sane conversation about gun violence.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.