It's not surprising that the maintenance of this tool, which law enforcement finds useful for obvious reasons, is a total mess. But why? What's so difficult in keeping records.
Colorado's concealed-weapons database does not contain information about 16,000 permits — 45 percent of those issued — partly because 20 counties, including Douglas and El Paso, don't enter the information with Colorado Crime Information Center.
And that is just part of the problem. Among other audit findings:
• Of 51,000 records that are entered by participating sheriff's offices onto the computer system, 32,000, or 63 percent, of the records contain inaccuracies, the audit says.
• Although concealed-gun permits expire in five years, the database contains records for dozens of permits claiming they won't expire for 40, 50 or 100 years.
• 2,000 records in the database are duplicates, with one showing the permit as valid, and a second showing it as revoked — for the same person.
• Another 2,700 permits indicate on an initial screen that a person has a permit while a secondary screen shows that they were denied a permit.
How do you account for this mess? Who is it exactly who is failing to report or creating duplicate records? Who's responsible for this?
Who benefits from this confusion? Wouldn't this be one of those situations that benefits all gun owners. The out and out criminals, the hidden criminals and the law-abiding gun owners all enjoy this one.
What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
"It's not surprising that the maintenance of this tool, which law enforcement finds useful for obvious reasons, is a total mess. "
ReplyDeleteOK, that's funny right there.
The problems stem from the transition of "may issue" to "shall issue".
Why does everyone act surprised when government bureaucrats that almost can never be fired don't do their jobs?
ReplyDeleteI don't even get the point of this post. We need to ban guns because we can't keep our records straight? Or we need a registration database because we are so good at keeping databases?
The point is it is our fault. Somehow.
ReplyDeleteI think the point here is that we should just do away with a permitting system entirely. There are three states with such a system, and still no blood in the streets as the Brady Bunch love to predict. Think of all the tax payer money we could save, and all the time LEOs would have available to focus on actual criminals if they weren't absorbed in writing permission slips for a Constitutionally protected right.
ReplyDeleteJust one more reason for Constitutional Carry. No license, no need for a crappy, money-sapping, time-wasting database.
ReplyDeleteOne point of this post is that the folks in charge of this mess are not the right ones. Obviously, people who don't believe in gun control wouldn't do it right. What FWM said about government bureaucrats is true, but I think that's compounded by the fact that these folks don't believe in the program in the first place.
ReplyDelete"What FWM said about government bureaucrats is true, but I think that's compounded by the fact that these folks don't believe in the program in the first place."
ReplyDeleteVery few people do.