http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,37128,00.html
WASHINGTON -- The FBI computer that performs background checks on prospective gun buyers is sluggish and prone to unexplained failures, experts told
Congress on Wednesday.
Glitches in the massive database that records information on about 38 million Americans have blocked law-abiding citizens from purchasing firearms for
personal protection and delayed one-quarter of all such transactions, witnesses said during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary committee.
"Instead of an instant check, we have a system that too often causes needless delay to law-abiding citizens who are simply exercising their constitutional
rights," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the panel's chairman. "System outages are a major culprit."
Hatch said he supports the concept of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), but blamed the Clinton administration and the FBI
for not running it properly. Some Democrats, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), echoed the criticism.
An FBI representative said the agency is trying to fix its technical problems.
"The FBI's goal is to minimize system downtime. The FBI recognizes the disruptive effect downtime can have on the business operations of gun dealers
and the resulting inconvenience to prospective gun buyers," FBI Assistant Director David Loesch said.
"We're learning as we go along to make this better. We've got a lot of things working that are going to make this better," Loesch said.
The NICS grew out of the 1993 Brady Bill, officially called the Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Starting in 1998, it replaced the five-day waiting period for
handgun purchases from a dealer with a supposedly instant check of three databases: the internal NICS records, the Interstate Identification Index, and
the National Crime Information Center.
On May 11, as reported by Wired News, the NICS computer inexplicably crashed. Over 100,000 Americans were prevented from purchasing firearms
because of the glitch, which took place on the eve of the pro-regulation "Million Mom March."
The FBI's Loesch admitted the agency had not figured out what happened.
"Preliminary root cause analysis of the May outages has ruled out operator-induced error, hacker-induced error, virus-induced error, or a hardware-induced
error," Loesch said.
He said the FBI believes it was a "defect" caused by miscalculating table sizes in the interstate ID database.
Loesch said that the FBI could do better with more "resources."
Replied Leahy: "I understand how difficult it is to have the resources for everything you need to do. But somewhere along the line you have to have
priorities here. Where are you going to put the resources?"
Loesch paused, shrugged his shoulders, and said he didn't have an answer.
Investigators at the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that NICS was offline a total of 215 hours from November 1998 to November 1999.
A gun range owner and Second Amendment advocate in Spokane, Washington, testified that one of her customers had hoped to buy a gun because her
ex-husband was about to be released from jail.
"The mom asked me how long it would take to buy a gun. I had to tell her, she better plan ahead, because there are not guarantees we can get a
background check processed in less than a week," said Robin Ball, owner of the Sharp Shooting Indoor Range. "Here is a classic case of a parent trying to
do the right thing under very difficult circumstances."
"Customers may blame the dealer because we are the closest people to yell at, but the responsibility lies with the government and the lack of
determination to fix these problems only increases that distrust," Ball said.
Part of the processing -- almost half -- is performed by state government computers.
Stu Smith of the Utah Department of Public Safety testified that states could also improve, and said that and said that Utah's denial percentage is almost
twice as high as the FBI's. "The states have the ability to do a better job of backgrounding persons prior to firearms transfers, but the states lack the
funding and now the incentive to take on this type of tasking," Smith said.
In the first 13 months of operation, 71 percent of the denials were due to the applicant having a "felon" criminal record, according to a March 2000 Justice
Department report.
Former presidential candidate Bob Dole, a onetime Republican senator, showed up to testify, saying such a system "has been a personal crusade of mine
for many years."
Dole said that "NICS needs to be backed up by a redundant system in case of a breakdown in the primary operating system," and said the FBI estimates
the upgrade it will cost $7 million.
Although nobody at the hearing questioned the NICS, some Second Amendment advocates have long opposed the idea of a federal database governing
gun purchases.
"We enthusiastically oppose it. The instant background check is an unconstitutional prior restraint on the exercise of a constitutionally protected
liberty," says Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America in Springfield, Virginia. "It's like requiring a check on journalists before they can
enter their profession or write a column."
"They don't use registration lists to solve crime," Pratt said. "The only thing they use registration lists for is collecting guns (and) disarming people so
they become easier pickings for criminals who don't register their guns."
WASHINGTON -- The FBI computer that performs background checks on prospective gun buyers is sluggish and prone to unexplained failures, experts told
Congress on Wednesday.
Glitches in the massive database that records information on about 38 million Americans have blocked law-abiding citizens from purchasing firearms for
personal protection and delayed one-quarter of all such transactions, witnesses said during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary committee.
"Instead of an instant check, we have a system that too often causes needless delay to law-abiding citizens who are simply exercising their constitutional
rights," said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the panel's chairman. "System outages are a major culprit."
Hatch said he supports the concept of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), but blamed the Clinton administration and the FBI
for not running it properly. Some Democrats, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), echoed the criticism.
An FBI representative said the agency is trying to fix its technical problems.
"The FBI's goal is to minimize system downtime. The FBI recognizes the disruptive effect downtime can have on the business operations of gun dealers
and the resulting inconvenience to prospective gun buyers," FBI Assistant Director David Loesch said.
"We're learning as we go along to make this better. We've got a lot of things working that are going to make this better," Loesch said.
The NICS grew out of the 1993 Brady Bill, officially called the Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Starting in 1998, it replaced the five-day waiting period for
handgun purchases from a dealer with a supposedly instant check of three databases: the internal NICS records, the Interstate Identification Index, and
the National Crime Information Center.
On May 11, as reported by Wired News, the NICS computer inexplicably crashed. Over 100,000 Americans were prevented from purchasing firearms
because of the glitch, which took place on the eve of the pro-regulation "Million Mom March."
The FBI's Loesch admitted the agency had not figured out what happened.
"Preliminary root cause analysis of the May outages has ruled out operator-induced error, hacker-induced error, virus-induced error, or a hardware-induced
error," Loesch said.
He said the FBI believes it was a "defect" caused by miscalculating table sizes in the interstate ID database.
Loesch said that the FBI could do better with more "resources."
Replied Leahy: "I understand how difficult it is to have the resources for everything you need to do. But somewhere along the line you have to have
priorities here. Where are you going to put the resources?"
Loesch paused, shrugged his shoulders, and said he didn't have an answer.
Investigators at the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that NICS was offline a total of 215 hours from November 1998 to November 1999.
A gun range owner and Second Amendment advocate in Spokane, Washington, testified that one of her customers had hoped to buy a gun because her
ex-husband was about to be released from jail.
"The mom asked me how long it would take to buy a gun. I had to tell her, she better plan ahead, because there are not guarantees we can get a
background check processed in less than a week," said Robin Ball, owner of the Sharp Shooting Indoor Range. "Here is a classic case of a parent trying to
do the right thing under very difficult circumstances."
"Customers may blame the dealer because we are the closest people to yell at, but the responsibility lies with the government and the lack of
determination to fix these problems only increases that distrust," Ball said.
Part of the processing -- almost half -- is performed by state government computers.
Stu Smith of the Utah Department of Public Safety testified that states could also improve, and said that and said that Utah's denial percentage is almost
twice as high as the FBI's. "The states have the ability to do a better job of backgrounding persons prior to firearms transfers, but the states lack the
funding and now the incentive to take on this type of tasking," Smith said.
In the first 13 months of operation, 71 percent of the denials were due to the applicant having a "felon" criminal record, according to a March 2000 Justice
Department report.
Former presidential candidate Bob Dole, a onetime Republican senator, showed up to testify, saying such a system "has been a personal crusade of mine
for many years."
Dole said that "NICS needs to be backed up by a redundant system in case of a breakdown in the primary operating system," and said the FBI estimates
the upgrade it will cost $7 million.
Although nobody at the hearing questioned the NICS, some Second Amendment advocates have long opposed the idea of a federal database governing
gun purchases.
"We enthusiastically oppose it. The instant background check is an unconstitutional prior restraint on the exercise of a constitutionally protected
liberty," says Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America in Springfield, Virginia. "It's like requiring a check on journalists before they can
enter their profession or write a column."
"They don't use registration lists to solve crime," Pratt said. "The only thing they use registration lists for is collecting guns (and) disarming people so
they become easier pickings for criminals who don't register their guns."
