Author calls for overhaul of NICS gun background checks
"BIDS" system works better, costs hundreds of millions less
The lamestream media told you:
The Brady law's NICS background check system is flawed and it does not catch all criminals. The system should be expanded and its loopholes closed. In other news, the government is out of money, hopelessly in debt, and cost savings must be found across the entire national budget.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:
a) The extremely expensive and labor-intensive NICS background check concept for firearms can be dramatically improved with a system called BIDS, while saving most of the astronomical costs, reducing the national debt, and eliminating the possibility of illegal gun registries growing in federal government hands.
b) The NICS system for retail gun sales does a fair job, but it is incredibly complex. The staff needed to handle 33,000 checks a day on average (about one million checks per month) is huge, though actual employee counts are not known (when started, the call center itself had 900 people). The reduction of the size of government here could be significant.
c) Civil-rights advocates are justifiably worried that the NICS system, which requires gun dealers nationally to call an FBI center for every gun sold, is ripe for abuse, and could be compiling lists of innocent people, against every tenet of modern law. When originally implemented in 1994, then-attorney-general Janet Reno, contrary to statutory requirements, claimed the system compiled registries of gun owners with no way to reverse this -- astounding hubris in the computer age. The FBI and BATFE flatly deny they compile lists, as the law strictly requires. There is no independent way to confirm this however, and critics fear the lists may be in federal hands despite law to the contrary.
d) Any checks that include non-national sources such as Scotland Yard, the Royal Canadian police or Mexican authorities, would put the information in those hands, with no requirements to destroy records and preserve the privacy of American citizens. A diagram of how NICS works is available at gunlaws.com: http://www.gunlaws.com/images/nicsbig.gif
e) A simple, cost-cutting, efficient alternative called BIDS can be easily implemented, and removes the significant problems and especially the costs associated with NICS.
Basically, BIDS distributes the encrypted, password-protected list of hardcore prohibited possessors ("the NICS Index") to federally licensed firearm dealers' computers. The files can be updated all day long as needed, as people are added to the list or through appeal and corrections, come off the list. Dealers check their potential customers against their local computerized list to lockout illegal sales. BIDS offers the identical sales-security as NICS does. This maintains the privacy of innocent citizens and eliminates the potential for illegal government registries. The system cost goes from the current labor-intensive huge budget outlays to tiny database-updates costs that are already in place. We rely on dealers under BIDS the same as we do under NICS, that doesn't change.
Dealers cannot use the list for any other purpose, the same as they cannot use NICS for other purposes. (They actually can for both NICS or BIDS, of course, but it's illegal and would cost them their licenses). BIDS would be subject to the same safeguards, audits and penalties as NICS. BIDS that “Blind Identification Database System” saves buckets of money, shrinks government and does the same job. It's simple. It's cheap. It works. Do it. Is there a legislator with the cojones to propose it? Ask yours. Here are the details and more talking points: http://www.gunlaws.com/BIDS%20v.%20NICS.htm
The main objection is going to come from the FBI and bureaucrats, because it takes power and budget away from them. But that's a good thing. If that's the only objection, here comes BIDS, goodbye NICS. Speak with your state gun-rights groups, http://www.gunlaws.com/links, or your legislators directly, tell them you know how to save tens of millions, and stay on it. You can make the difference.
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