Delaware bill would close gun-report loophole

[jpak]

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110331/NEWS02/103310354/Bill-would-close-gun-report-loophole?odyssey=tab%7Cmostpopular%7Ctext%7CFRONTPAGE

DOVER -- The man who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in April 2007 was found by a judge to be mentally unfit to purchase weapons two years prior to the shooting rampage.

Authorities later discovered a gap in the reporting system between Virginia and the federal government that allowed Seung-Hui Cho to purchase two handguns with 15-round and 10-round magazines at gun shows.

The loophole Cho exploited resulted in one of the deadliest shootings at a college campus in U.S. history, said Peter Read, whose 19-year-old daughter, Mary, was gunned down by Cho in her French class on April 16, 2007.

"He should have been stopped at the point of sale by a background check when getting the weapons he used to kill my daughter," Read testified Wednesday before the Delaware House Judiciary Committee.

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[ManiacJoe]

1. Better late than never.

However, that does not help those already harmed.

[spin]

2. I have no problem with improving the NICS background check ...

by requiring the names of those adjudged to have severe mental issues that would make their owning firearms a danger to society, being input into the NICS system.

I believe most of the posters who are in favor of gun ownership agree with me on this point.

I would also like to see a way devised for private citizens to utilize the NICS background check so they could insure that people who wish to buy their firearms are not on the list. Some pro-RKBA posters here disagree with me on this idea as they point out that it would be a de facto registration system.

I believe the system could be set up so the serial numbers and the types of the firearms involved in the sale would not be recorded. All that is necessary is for the buyer to know that the purchaser is not on the list of those forbidden to buy firearms.

The government has access to very effective data mining capacities. If they wish to come up with a list of those who own firearms in this country, it would be no challenge and would be amazingly accurate.

[Euromutt]

3. I'm not sure "loophole" is quite the right word here

The way the term "loophole" is generally used with regard to laws and regulations is "an ambiguity or exception in a rule that can be exploited in order to avoid its effect." When one exploits a loophole, one is typically doing something that is not against the letter of the law, though it most certainly violates its spirit. Cho's acquisition of his firearms, however, was plain illegal; it's just that the safeguards that should have caught him failed to do so.

[TheWraith]

4. Correct. This isn't a loophole, it's a system failure.

Something that's clearly illegal occurred--not just the sale itself, but the DE gov's failure to report. The background check system worked the way it was supposed to, in the absence of other information... garbage in, garbage out.