Gun sale database needs medical info
‘FBI: Data on mentally ill could save lives,” announced the Fort Worth Star-Telegram headline last week.
At last. Recognition that without access to some medical records, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, is an inadequate tool for keeping firearms away from people who, under federal law, can’t have them.
No sane person on either side of the gun debate can reasonably argue that the instant check is not a good idea. Initiated in 1998, NICS replaced the Brady Act, which required a five-day waiting period between the time that an individual filled out the paperwork to buy a handgun and when that person could take possession of it.
Today, when a person goes into a licensed gun dealer’s to purchase a firearm – be it a handgun or a long gun – the business operator is, in most cases, able to get an immediate answer from the FBI-operated computer system as to whether that individual is prohibited from buying one.
Of the more than 53 million background checks for gun sales that the FBI says it has conducted since 1998, fewer than 2 percent have resulted in denied sales. Gun-control advocates find little comfort in those numbers, but the truth is that the overwhelming majority of people who buy firearms have every legal right to do so.
Of the more than 850,000 sales that were denied, most were nixed because the applicants were convicts. That’s what the law is supposed to do: keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.
But felons aren’t the only ones who are barred from buying firearms. Federal law prohibits gun purchases by the mentally ill. Privacy laws in most states prohibit access to personal medical records, so unfortunately there’s no way for NICS to provide complete information to a licensed gun dealer who calls in for a background check.
Therein lies the stuff that makes for nightmare stories that are used to club gun rights proponents over the head:
Farron Barksdale killed two Athens, Ala., police officers in 2004 with a rifle he’d bought on Christmas Eve. Barksdale had been involuntarily committed to mental hospitals at least twice.
Shayla Stewart of Denton, Texas, was hospitalized five times – twice by court order – for psychotic problems before she bought a shotgun and killed herself with it.
Peter Troy bought a rifle in New York – a state with famously tough gun laws – and fatally shot a priest and a worshipper during Mass inside a Long Island church. Troy, a schizophrenic, had been admitted to mental hospitals twice.
It’s only after a tragedy, when police and the media are interviewing mourning families and stunned friends, that the shooter’s history of mental illness comes to light. People bent on doing harm to themselves or others aren’t likely to tell the truth about that on the yellow sheet they must fill out in order to buy a gun.
Before privacy advocates start wailing about Big Brother, it’s important to know that the federal legislation proposed to fix this problem covers the records of only those individuals who have been found mentally defective by a court or have been committed by a judge to a mental institution.
According to congressional research, 10 states currently provide disqualifying mental health records to NICS, but only one of those comes close to turning over complete records. Eight states have ponied up fewer than 40 records each. Not 40 percent of the records – just 40 records.
The lack of disqualifying mental-illness records isn’t the only problem that the feds face in conducting timely and accurate background checks. States aren’t holding up their end of the deal by making sure that the FBI has complete criminal records.
About 24 million criminal records are held in state archives that aren’t automated or aren’t accessible by NICS. An additional 16 million that are automated and accessible are missing crucial data, such as arrest dispositions.
This aspect of the gun debate should be one on which both sides agree: The NICS database must be as up to date and complete as possible so no one ever has to read another story about felons or mentally ill people making headlines with a gun that they weren’t kept from buying.