Guest Editorial
BY ALAN KORWIN | JUNE 5, 2013
Background checks are failing
The lamestream media told you: Nothing. They missed this part of the story altogether.
Actually, that's not correct. They had it and suppressed it.
The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that: Rep. Trey Gowdy (Rep., SC) asked AG Eric Holder why so few failed background checks lead to prosecutions. Holder didn't answer. Trey actually helped him off the hook, sympathizing about the low "jury appeal" of NICS-denial cases.
But after all, attempting to buy a firearm if you're an escapee, felon, fugitive, jihadi, certified mental case, illegal alien, renunciant, drug lord, etc., is a five-year federal felony, on top of filling out the form falsely, on top of handling the gun before trying to buy it.
That's what the NICS background check finds and prevents, or so we're led to believe. What happens to all those attempted criminals? Then the AG ducked and dodged about seeking to grant illegals citizenship (which would remove them from the prohibited possessor list, by the way). All media follow these things but it somehow didn't make the "news" (watch five juicy minutes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaxZeA9VscI).
Here are the numbers since NICS checks began. The lamestream has kept this out of the debate for reasons that become immediately obvious:
In other words,
We prevented one million gun sales from going through, presumably because these people are murderers, rapists, fugitives, Muslim warriors and similar. We have the FBI on the phone, the bad guy’s standing there waiting in front of an armed guy (the gun dealer), and the bad guy's name and address on a form, from a picture ID. Why don't we arrest these people? We turn them loose.
The FBI looked them up, determined they're on Wanted Posters (figuratively speaking), or just got out of prison, or committed some major (or not so major) crime years ago, or are on a watch list, or whatever. The FBI utters the single word "Deny" to the dealer, and that's it.
Then you tell the criminal in front of you, "Have a nice day; please close the door as you leave." That's what the new and improved "universal background check" that failed in the Senate is designed to do too, but to more people. The phrase "lacks sufficient prosecutorial merit" only enters the discussion in this Page Nine report.
People who hate guns or have no respect for gun rights want to expand the system so more innocent people are included in the FBI list of 10.3 million people-to-be-kept gunless. More (theoretical, I'll get to that in a moment) criminals will be found and turned loose too. Gun owners and people who can see what's going on want to do something about the tens of thousands of criminals we're supposedly finding and turning loose with the system we have.
So which should it be? Deal with these countless (supposed) criminals we're finding now, or throw more wood on the fire? Add more burden to the innocent or burden the criminals already? We barely have funds to do either. We apparently have the will to do neither. Bizarre.
But wait -- are these really criminals we're finding? If the FBI numbers are correct -- and why wouldn't they be -- 1.01 million Americans have had their right to keep and bear arms denied by a computer readout and a bureaucrat on the phone (a call-center clerk, actually). That's the FBI's NICS process. Where is the due process in that? Don't you have to be tried, face a jury, have a judge, a lawyer, compulsory process for calling witnesses, rules of evidence, something more than a clerk and a phone call, to have your fundamental constitutional rights stripped away from you?
Oh, I'm sorry, you have the right to appeal the computer's denial of your rights, so that makes the system fair? Many people appeal the denials and win, so this is good? No, this means the system is falsely denying people their rights, and no one is being punished for the false denials. This means you are found guilty, and are allowed to prove your innocence. Guilty until proven innocent is reprehensible in the American system of justice.
Who concocted this abomination? Denial of civil rights under color of law is a criminal offense. 18 USC §241 et seq. The system is run by... wait for it... the Dept. of Justice.
Maybe they don't prosecute more of these because they know they can't get convictions. Maybe we aren't denying guns to hardened criminals after all? You can't have it both ways. If NICS is keeping us safe, and mass murderers, or regular murderers, or just escapees and lo-class thugs are being prevented from buying guns at retail and paying sales tax, then we should definitely begin arresting them while they stand around at known locations.
If on the other hand, the system isn't all it's cracked up to be, and far too many of these people are regular citizens being denied their rights by a computer, then the idea of expanding the program needs a second look. How much computerized rights denial should we introduce into the fabric of society?
We should prove the worth of NICS by arresting the tens of thousands of criminals it claims to find, try them in court, make us all safer, and see if that's truly the case.
Where is the "news" media on all this? Once again, their coverage is abysmal. The public is not misinformed; they are uninformed, incapable of making anything approaching a rational decision. Congress, as you'll see, is in the same boat.
