My point is that gun violence causes not only tragedies but also leads to high legal expenses for government and financial difficulties for the families of the victims.
It's critical that we do our best to insure that the first line of defense against violent criminals and those with serious mental issues purchasing firearms. The background check system should complete and reliable and making sure that it is should be a top priority in every state. It might also require funds to be appropriated by Congress to aid the states in their efforts.
Badly flawed background check system fails to contain firearms sales
Center story detailed 'instant check' system flaws
By Rick Schmitt 2:00 am, June 23, 2011 Updated: 4:05 pm, February 8, 2013
***snip***
The data gap that Geisel exploited should have been closed by now. Four years ago, after the massacre at Virginia Tech exposed gaps in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), Congress and the Bush administration took decisive action to shore up the joint state-federal operation, which is supposed to keep guns away from the deranged and the dangerous.
But the so-called NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 has clearly not improved things much at all, an iWatch News investigation found. And that’s far from the only problem. The federal background check system, conceived as a first line of defense against gun crime, remains riddled with data gaps, loopholes and disputes over just who should be barred – a troubling conclusion brought into sharp relief by the January shooting spree in Arizona that killed six and wounded 13 others, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
A dozen years after it went fully operational, NICS is still a patchwork operation that, despite a huge data base, often relies on massively incomplete information.
Millions of pertinent documents – from mental health and drug abuse records to the case records of accused felons – remain outside the system, in boxes in courthouse basements or in legal limbo because of state and local laws that prohibit sharing with the feds. As a result, guns are getting into the hands of people who should never possess them....emphasis added
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2011/06/23/4982/badly-flawed-background-check-system-fails-contain-firearms-sales
The above is a rather long but excellent article and was funded in part by a grant from the Joyce Foundation.
= new reply since forum marked as read