Reply #11: Absolutely hypocritical

[slackmaster]

But the actual records of gun purchases are not in the NICS database. NICS tells you only that a background check was initiated, on and by whom, date and time, and the outcome of the query.

Records of gun purchases are only in the paper files of gun dealers. There is no central registry of gun sales for items not covered by the National Firearms Act. And there is nothing to "shred" in NICS. It's all electronic. Making a backup copy would be trivially easy.

There really would be no harm IMO in keeping NICS check records for some defined retention period. My point is that as a law enforcement tool that information would be next to worthless.

If the FBI or another agency suspects someone of terrorism they should be tailing that person aggressively. Small arms purchases seem to me a lot less important than purchases of chemicals that can be used to produce explosive devices, chemical munitions, etc.