To the degree this keeps guns out of the hands of the truly mentally ill, I don't have a particular problem with this agreement between two adversaries.

Under the agreement, participating states would be given monetary enticements for the first time to keep the federal background database up to date, as well as penalties for failing to comply.

To sign on to the deal, the powerful gun lobby won significant concessions from Democratic negotiators in weeks of painstaking talks. Individuals with minor infractions in their pasts could petition their states to have their names removed from the federal database, and about 83,000 military veterans, put into the system by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2000 for alleged mental health reasons, would have a chance to clean their records. The federal government would be permanently barred from charging gun buyers or sellers a fee for their background checks. In addition, faulty records such as duplicative names or expunged convictions would have to be scrubbed from the database.

"The NRA worked diligently with the concerns of gun owners and law enforcement in mind to make a . . . system that's better for gun owners and better for law enforcement," said House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), a former NRA board member, who led the talks.

My questions:

1) How difficult will it be for victims of faulty information to correct it?

2) How long will purchase records be retained by the government?

I'm also concerned about the issue of allowing folks with minor infractions to be removed from the database. I'd personally like to see such a program expanded to include those convicted of non-violent felonies -- why should a conviction for tax evasion, for example, be the basis for losing the right to keep and bear arms?

However, this agreement does seem to be a reasonable step towards public safety -- but we must remain vigilant lest it become one more effort to unnecessarily restrict a liberty enshrined in the Constitution.

Posted by: Greg at 07:26 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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