Background Check System A Complete Mess

By Tom Knighton

The shooter in Sutherland Springs wasn’t just a disease, he was a symptom. He was a symptom of several things, to be honest, and not just a symptom of our failing mental health system. One thing, in particular, was that he was a symptom of a failing background check system that needs serious reform if it’s going to be remotely useful.

After all, it seems that individual isn’t the only one who has managed to skate by despite relevant information not being input into the NICS.

The FBI’s background-check system is missing millions of records of criminal convictions, mental illness diagnoses and other flags that would keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands, a gap that contributed to the shooting deaths of 26 people in a Texas church this week.

Experts who study the data say government agencies responsible for maintaining such records have long failed to forward them into federal databases used for gun background checks – systemic breakdowns that have lingered for decades as officials decided they were too costly and time-consuming to fix.

As the shooting at a Texas church on Sunday showed, what the FBI doesn’t know can get people killed. In that case, the gunman had …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms