Wither NICS?
James Jay Baker, executive director of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action in Washington, DC, delivers a letter to the editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to refute a position taken by Americans for Gun Safety on state record keeping of gun sales. The unedited version of the letter can be read here.

From the article:

"In March 2000, the General Accounting Office (GAO) audited the FBI's implementation of NICS. The study revealed deficiencies in the system.

The failures are rudimentary; the FBI had no back-up system; instead of building a dedicated database with necessary information, they strung together existing databases (with irrelevant data). Also, this system failed to meet the FBI own system security standards.

More perplexing was the Justice Department’s failure to ensure that the funding was properly spent on the "instant check" database. Some sources inside say that money was wasted on fingerprinting equipment. No one knows the truth, because a systemic audit was never performed."

(The GAO report can be found here.)

Old news, to be sure, but there seems to be a growing restlessness among anti-gun groups who are rankled by John Ashcroft's willingness to ignore the previous Administration's misinterpretation of the Brady Law and NICS. I wrote about this back on January 9 in reference to Deb Reichmann's column. Groups such as the Violence Policy Center and Americans for Gun Safety certainly have a tough row to hoe in the country right now with Americans seeming to be much more tolerant of their fellow citizens who choose to protect themselves with firearms. Give the anti-gunowners credit, though, for having zeal enough to make even the most ardent jihadi proud.
posted by Terry at 4:13:00 PM