Grants will improve NICS background check ...

[spin]

Justice Department Funds Will Improve Brady Background Checks

WASHINGTON - September 14 - The U.S. Justice Department’s announcement yesterday of almost $17 million in grants to eight states to improve their Brady background check systems were made possible by legislation passed by Congress in December 2007 and signed by President George W. Bush in January 2008 following the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007. A number of families affected by those shootings personally urged enactment of this law, along with the Brady Campaign.

Although a Virginia court had found him to be dangerously mentally ill, the Virginia Tech shooter passed two Brady background checks because Virginia had not submitted the appropriate record to the FBI’s National Instant Check System (NICS).

Seven of the eight states (Idaho, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Texas, and Wisconsin) that were announced as grant recipients yesterday had submitted very few records of mental health adjudications to the NICS at least through November of 2008, according to an update the Justice Department released to the Brady Campaign in January 2009. Only Florida, which receives a $3,159,228 grant, had submitted a significant number of those records since 2001. The other seven states receiving grants had submitted fewer than 40 records combined as of November 2008.

“We commend the Justice Department for getting critical funds to these states to improve their Brady background record submissions. States overall have done a very poor job of submitting records of dangerously mentally ill persons who shouldn’t be allowed to purchase firearms,” said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign. “As a result, dangerous people who shouldn’t pass Brady background checks to purchase guns are passing those checks and getting armed.”
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2010/09/14-10

[rrneck]

1. Good news. nt

[ManiacJoe]

2. How did NICS become "Brady background checks"???

Never mind... Brady press release...

Still, good news.

[spin]

5. It was one of the few good ideas that the Brady Campaign ever developed...

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Pub.L. 103-159, 107 Stat. was an Act of the United States Congress that, for the first time, instituted federal background checks on firearm purchasers in the United States.

It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on November 30, 1993, and went into effect on February 28, 1994. The Act was named after James Brady, who was shot by John Hinckley, Jr. during an attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981.

The Brady Act requires that background checks be conducted on individuals before a firearm may be purchased from a federally licensed dealer, manufacturer or importer - unless an exception applies. If there are no additional state restrictions, a firearm may be transferred to an individual upon approval by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) maintained by the FBI. In some states, proof of a previous background check can be used to bypass the NICS check. For example, a state-issued concealed carry permit usually includes a background check equivalent to the one required by the Act. Other alternatives to the NICS check include state-issued handgun purchase permits or mandatory state or local background checks.

***snip***

After the Brady Act was originally proposed in 1987, the National Rifle Association (NRA) mobilized to defeat the legislation, spending millions of dollars in the process. While the bill eventually did pass in both chambers of the United States Congress, the NRA was able to win an important concession: the final version of the legislation provided that, in 1998, the five-day waiting period for handgun sales would be replaced by an instant computerized background check that involved no waiting periods.<16>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brady_Handgun_Violence_Prevention_Act#Opposition_by_National_Rifle_Association

[SteveM]

3. I cannot understand this bottleneck in terms of money alone...

If I read correctly a few years ago, Virginia was second only to California in reporting felons/mental incompetents up the chain. "Even" Florida has "submitted a significant number of those records..." I don't believe that Virginia state government is percolating in cash; yet they moved quite a few up the chain. And Florida?

I wonder how many states (I see Illinois, New Jersey, NY) who are so severely gun-control in outlook failed to move the data into the NICS? Maybe this issue (and their NICS "solution") isn't really so passionate to the controllers after all.

[spin]

4. I would have thought Illinois would have been one of the first states ...

to submit records, not one of the slowest.