There is Some Room for Improvement

I might have a problem. I love guns. And as a law abiding (mostly) citizen I feel like I ought to be able to get what I want because I, and the powers that be, are pretty damn sure I ain't gonna snap...pretty sure.

Is there room for improvement in the current gun buying world? Are you sitting down? I would think so.

1. The 4473 ( http://www.ocshooters.com/Gen/Form-4473/ATF-Form-4473.htm ) is a document one has to complete to purchase a firearm in this country. Everyone. It lets the BATFE know where you are and who you are. And it's all done on the honour system. It asks if you're the actual buyer, and if you use drugs, and if you're a US citizen, and if you have ever been adjudicated mentally ill...etc. Answer wrong, and you don't get your gun. I know regular pot-smoking gun-toting people right now who couldn't have filled it out truthfully!

The problem with it is that nut jobs and criminals or someone with a criminal intent isn't concerned with the law. They aren't honest. It's someone who'll lie on a piece of paper to the federal government (like you do on your 1040's) that might stop by and rob you at gunpoint later...or march through campus halls...or ambush supermarket parking lots.

At the same time however, most criminals aren't concerned with going to the store and buying a gun. Why do that when you can just steal one, or buy one from your buddy who just stole one?

So how do you make it tougher? I don't know. Perhaps if one's caught lying on it, or filling one out to purchase a firearm for someone who isn't supposed to have one, could be grounds for making that person ineligible to purchase a firearm for a year or something. Maybe drug testing at the buyer's expense is a good idea? Affidavits from all county wide mental health institutes stating you haven't ever been admitted?

At any rate, this document is supposed to be validated and "backed up" by the "new"....

2. Instant Background check. (http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics)

Mandated by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 and launched by the FBI on November 30, 1998, NICS is used by Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to instantly determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to buy firearms or explosives. Before ringing up the sale, cashiers call in a check to the FBI or to other designated agencies to ensure that each customer does not have a criminal record or isn't otherwise ineligible to make a purchase.

Now it sounds great, and it is. I've seen it stop an illegal purchase in its tracks. Of course, the problem is the time space between someone breaking the law (and being convicted) and the time it takes to show up on the NICS service. Same thing with mental problems. So it's a great system, but that time passage has to be the biggest problem.

So how do you "fix" it? I don't know. I'd like to see a way for FFL holders to input into the system every time a person who comes in to purchase a gun and blows it by acting insane, or filling out the 4473 with the wrong answers, or is clearly doing a "straw" purchase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_purchase). That way, when this person fails at one store, he doesn't take his newly acquired method of skating through the system to the next store down the road. And I shudder to say this, but maybe there should be a quick call to the NICS for ammunition purchases...but talk about a volume increase of calls....and hunters the country over at the mercy of WalMart employees. (The AZ murderer was denied a purchase by a thoughtful and wary Walmart employee.)

Also, I think anyone who wishes a private sale of a firearm should have access to the service, whether online or by phone! What an asset it be for law abiding citizens to have before we make private sales. You know, also, allowing public access to this service would close the bullshit, anti-gun medias' "gun show loophole." As it is now, all a private citizen can do is ask politely if the guy handing over the money is insane or a felon or is about to commit a felony...or ask for a Permit to Purchase a Handgun...

Which brings me to...

3. Pistol Permits. Here in NC, we have to go to the Sheriff's office in our county and apply for a permit to purchase a handgun. When we do this, the deputies take our info, and while we fulfill our five day waiting period, they're supposed to check the county records to make sure we haven't been locked up for breaking the law, or, been locked up for slipping out of sanity.

You go to the same bunch when you apply for a Conceal Carry Permit, but the feds are involved as per your fingerprinting, and local deputies are supposed to go out into the bordering counties as well looking for felonies and mental hospital stays. I have no idea if they ever actually do.

The point being that they issue this permit that everyone needs to purchase a pistol. It's good for long gun purchases as well and it would seem to be an easy way for private sellers to ensure the person they are selling to can, in fact, legally buy a firearm as the local LEO's wouldn't issue a permit to someone who cannot. As a matter of fact, this permit is required for the private sales of handguns in NC.

The problem is, they're good for six years! A lot of things can happen in six years...so even I wouldn't mind seeing the shelf life of these things shorten to a few months rather than years, if, for nothing else, to stop that window of time where someone could have been convicted of a felony, released, and then set out to buy a new gun.

Also, if you have one of these permits on hand and you present them to the FFL during the purchase, it supersedes the need for the phone call to NICS, and I think that's a bad idea because of how long they last. The permits are a great tool for private sellers, but that huge time gap between the time of issue and the time of use is just too long to do anything other than "cover the ass" of the seller.

Naturally, all these proposed changes will never stop someone hellbent on committing crimes...or a criminal or a deranged person. And someone, as we all know, might be perfectly sane today, then slip away with age, or disease...

There are good laws on the books now with crummy enforcement. Just like immigration, there's no money and no time to get into what's going on in the gun world. Anecdotally speaking, I've seen felons walk out of my buddy's shop after trying to purchase when they should have been locked up for even trying to.

I've seen people bring guns in to sell on consignment who, when the guns wouldn't sell, could not retrieve them because they were ex-felons. And rather than drive home, they too should have been arrested. And the time a guy brought a stolen pistol in for repair, and following a call to the BATFE was allowed to go home, unpunished, uninterviewed...with his stolen gun.

When a lady bought a shotgun with a bad check, virtually stealing the gun, no one would arrest her for a year and half until she was stopped speeding, despite the fact that her street address and NCDL number were on the 4473! Thanks, BATFE!

So we're back to square one...where gun laws are only for people who follow laws. And freedom has a cost that occasionally is paid by our citizens in random acts of murder and cowardice. The only easy answer is to keep on keeping on, but with more education! People I meet are so woefully ignorant about guns and safety and the local laws that it's actually scary to me.

And what's worse, is to see them pontificate on their "facts" about extra lethal bullets and magazines (clips they like to call them) and all that. And yes, in the face of recent mass murders, it's been tough for me to hold my head up high as a gun loving rifleman, but I do. And without delving into hypothetical arguments about murder happening to me or mine, I would just say I've been blessed so far in me and mines' safety, and hope for more of the same.

"I don't know. Maybe you should always be on the lookout. If trouble always comes when you least expect it, then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it." wrote Cormac McCarthy in The Road, but it's not as paranoid as I'm sure you think it is at first blush. I mean, you have a fire extinguisher in your kitchen right? A first aid kit in your truck right?