Saturday, November 26, 2011

Virginia's Background Check System

Hamptonroads.com reports on the efforts of some to disband the Virginia State background check system for gun purchases. Of course these are the same folks who oppose any and all gun control efforts. More reasonable voices explain the problem and offer a simple solution.

This week, the State Police reported 11 percent of its sworn workforce is vacant. The vacancy rate is even higher among its civilian staff. Its Firearms Transaction Center handles close to 800 requests every day, except Christmas, for background checks on gun buyers and is authorized to have 14 call-takers and 11 technicians. As of Tuesday, it had four call-takers and seven technicians - less than half its normal staffing level.

Returning that center - and the agency itself - to full strength would significantly reduce the delay associated with buying a firearm. And it would eliminate perhaps the only legitimate complaint about a state system critical to public safety and enforcement of Virginia's gun laws.
What do you think? Is it simply a redundant and wasteful exercise to have two systems in play, state and federal? Or, wouldn't it make sense that many people with histories of violence might be picked up in the State system but not in the federal, meanwhile, the feds might be better at catching out-of-state offenses?

But, isn't the whole discussion made academic and meaningless as long as private sales are unregulated?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

13 comments:

  1. Here in Arkansas, anyone with a carry license just gets waved on through. I still have to fill out that silly piece of paper on which I swear that I'm not a villian, that I don't wax my moustache, that I don't have an evil laugh, and so forth, if that provides anyone any comfort.

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  2. What Greg describes fails to note if his 'silly paper' is valid, or fake, and if there has been any change in his status.

    And no, background checks HELP, but so long as there is such incomplete cooperation with the NICS AND the private sale loophole, the wrong people, dangerous bad people will have guns and misuse them on the rest of us.

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  3. It is symptomatic of the right that they are trying to make exercising the right to vote HARDER, disenfranchising tens of thousands who are legal voters but who tend to vote democratic. All, to 'solve' a problem with nearly non-existent voter fraud. The actual occurrences of it are incredibly rare.

    But the right will fight tooth and nail against gun checks, which would address a very real problem of illegal guns and illegal gun owners.

    The right to vote IS important in elections, and if the voters being disenfranchised were more likely to vote Republican I don't believe we would be seeing it. The gun issue is purely about satisfying the gun manufacturers behind the NRA who are so adept at propagandizing the gun owners and even more adept at buying off corrupt politicians, human life and limb be damned.

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  4. Uh, no, the gun "issue," as you put it, is about my rights. Manufacturers sell me their wares, but my right doesn't exist solely to make them money.

    And that ATF form is just plain silly. I can understand a background check, but answering a bunch of fool questions on a form isn't a check.

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  5. There is a lot of politicking - mostly right wing - over the gun issue.

    The funding of the gun issue legislation is alrgely the NRA, which IS about the gun manufacturers.

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  6. Private sales are quite regulated in MA, and our cities are cesspools of violent crime.

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  7. Dog Gone,

    The laws that the NRA endorses have my support as well, by and large. Can you at least recognize that said organization benefits more than just the gun manufacturers?

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  8. "Anonymous said...
    Private sales are quite regulated in MA, and our cities are cesspools of violent crime."

    A. You're a liar. I lived in MA and NH for the better part of 34 years and never found myself in fear of my life while going about my business in either state, or Maine or Vermont or NY where I now live. You want a cesspool of crime? Think Mogadishua, idiot.

    B. Check the loosegunzlawz states and get back to us on the violent crime rate.

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  9. Democommie,

    You want loose gun laws? Look at one of the states that you named: Vermont. Anyone who's eligible to own a firearm may carry a handgun, no license, no background check, and no hassles required.

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  10. democommie, I noticed that Weer'd Beard is from MA and he carries a big old 1911 on the train every day because the city is such a cesspool. I wonder if Anonymous knows him.

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  11. On the Democratic Underground they took me to task a bit for my mistake that state and federal background checks are done on the same sale. They say it's either or, in a state with the state-backrgound check they don't do the federal one.

    Is that true?

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  12. Weer'dybeardy lives in a state he despise? I never can figure that shit out. I've lived a lot of places and none of them longer than I felt safe. I know that the BOTSIO* guyz LIKE feeling like they need to shoot somebody, but normal people just don't live in panic.


    * Brotherhood Of The Sacred Inanimate Object

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  13. Congratulations to Weer'd Beard for getting a carry license in Massachusetts, if it's true.

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