My take on the Brady Bill, which I called "mostly window dressing". [View all]

[Half-Century Man]

Last edited Sun Oct 11, 2015, 05:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Sorry for the delay in my explanation, I had family matters to attend to.

I maintain the Brady Bill ended up be "mostly window dressing" because it is the federal statute we currently operate under. The one with all the holes in it. The one we are currently saying is too lax.


1) It only covered handguns.
On Edit; My assertion here was made on older references. The updated statute includes long guns as part of the background checked purchases. My thanks for the everyone's assist . It is better than I thought, bit I still think it is wanting.

2) undocumented private transfer of firearms without background checks (through private sales, gifts, barters, Etc).
3) Gun Show loop hole (private sales by unlicensed dealers in an organized marketplace setting).
4) The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) only deals with criminal history. It does not include medical evaluations which are not the results of a court order. So, incidents which should have been a red flag to suspend firearm purchases until further investigation, slip by. For example, the Navy yard shooters encounter with LEOs who documented his paranoid rant at a hotel days before he bought the shot gun he used.
5) The Brady Bill has only stopped about 0.5% of the 202,000,000 checks made since 1998.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/nics/reports/federal_denials.pdf


It did some good, I do not deny that. However what could have been compared to what we got is quite sad.
At best we did half the job.