Don't hinder gun-buying checks
As long as the records are ultimately destroyed, the federal government ought to keep documents on gun buyers for a reasonable length of time to weed out fraud. And a reasonable amount of time means a few months, not one day. The problem with this is that "ultimately destroyed" could mean 20 years from now, or whenever the police recover the associated weapon and destroy it, or any number of other things. The government does not need a list of law-abiding gun owners, and there is no conceivable use for keeping it. At one point, the government kept the records of all checks for 180 days, but President Clinton halved that requirement. Now, after three months, the records are destroyed unless there's reason to believe there's evidence of a crime. This gives the FBI and other agencies time to determine whether the instant-check system is being abused by fraud, perhaps by buyers or even dealers using a false identity. How many people have been convicted using these records? How many even prosecuted? |
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