4000+ vets added to NICS
CNN reports that more than 4000 veterans were added to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) used for background checks for gun buyers in the wake of the Sutherland Springs shooting by an Air Force veteran of some innocent church goers. The veteran had been booted from the service for spousal abuse which should have prevented him from buying a gun, had his name been added to NICS as it should have been.
In the months since, the US Department of Defense has scrambled to ensure all of its branches have properly updated the FBI’s system to track personnel kicked out of the military who are barred from owning firearms.
That push, a CNN review has found, has uncovered a backlog so significant that the FBI’s tally of dishonorably discharged former service members has ballooned by 4,284 names in just three months, a 38% leap…Since 2015, the number of people barred from owning firearms because they were dishonorably discharged had hovered at about 11,000, according to FBI statistics published online. That number suddenly jumped to 14,825 last November, then to 15,583 in December. It now stands at 15,597.
Good. That’s the way it should be, but you can bet that some of those thousands purchased guns before the NICS update.
A 1997 inspector general report noted that the military was often neglecting to notify the FBI when someone was convicted. The Navy failed to do so 93% of the time; the Army, 79% of the time. The report’s authors blamed poor policies that put “little emphasis” on sharing the information.
I’m also convinced that many non-military gate keepers to NICS data aren’t reporting accurately either. Not making excuses for the Pentagon, just making an observation.
Category: Veterans Issues
Better now than later, but better sooner than now.
Let NICS do the job it is supposed to do.
an Air Force of church goers?
My brain tells my fingers that they already typed a word, but that’s very often a lie.
I just thought it would be ironic if I of all commenters would point out spelling/grammar mistakes since I am probably the worst offender of mistakes coming from regular commenters. Just ask 2/17 Air Cav.
But Jonn gets to fix his errors, you and I have to let ours hang out there in the wind for others to mock.
It’s good for the soul to get mocked from time to time.
Sometimes I fix your errors if I have time.
As poorly as I spell, you’d spend all your time fixing my errors, even WITH spell check!
I had to give up my grammar/spelling watchdog stance a long time ago when I realized that the worst offenders are not people who post comments here, but rather those who write their own bios and engage in stupendous self-aggrandisement.
Besides, proofing something at 2AM ain’t easy.
*cough* Shane Kunteman *cough*
Dang it, fat fingered that
**Kunzeman** not *Kunteman* (although I think a suggested alternative spelling used “Kuntman”…)
Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury I give you exhibit A.
Twist. That hurts. I use my blue pencil as one positions a claymore: facing the enemy. I don’t use it on friendlies who comment by whomping keys in haste or, for whatever reason, don’t grasp that a singular noun takes a singular verb, if you knows what I means.
One other thing. I had one feeling and now its spent. Thanks, Twist. I was saving that one, too. Dammit.
Is that “A” for “Adz”?
Gee thanks, Twist, whydoncha just twist the knife a little more you twisted grammar Nazi? /jk
Wow. What is that, a thousandth of a percent? Too lazy to figure it out and I’m not a statistician but can you even use numbers that small?
That is a WHOLE lot of Sh*tbags!
Navy had a 7 percent success rate in telling the FBI they were giving out DD or BCD’s?
Just fucking awesome.
And it took a tragedy to correct.
That’s not an error, that’s a total systemic failure. People should go to prison for this. Especially if they were called out on it by an IG 20+ years ago!
It systemic I suspect. I know, because I’ve been told it and told it to basic trainee’s, that the Army will get you if you desert and you won’t be able to get good jobs, and that your desertion will follow you until the end of time.
And on occasion that does happen. A couple of weeks ago there was an article about how a chick got busted while trying to get on a cruise ship somewhere. I think last year there was one about a guy who got busted for speeding and turned out to be a basic trainee deserter.
We never hear about all the deserters running around who don’t get caught.
My limited personal experience tells me that number is pretty high.
Anecdotal story #1: Its 1999 and I’m working as a site manager for Intel. My boss, a good dude, has been with the company since 1988 and is up for a promotion to a director level position, which required an additional background check. Turns out in 1985 (two years into a four year contract) he had been a EW tech on the USS Enterprise and while on liberty in Hawaii decided he didn’t want to be in the Navy anymore…
Anecdotal story #2: Last August while supporting a basic training mission at Ft Benning a guy walked up to the BN HQ and turned himself in. He been at basic there in September 2001 and freaked out when shit got real. The guilt got to him, not the authorities. In the time he’d been out he’d earned a degree, got married, and had a good job working for logistics company.
My point is, the military doesn’t really report these things like they should. So a 21% success rate for the Army strikes me as pretty damn good.
In absolutely the worst way possible.
My first “duty assignment” as a brand new 2nd Lieutenant at Fort Drum (my battalion was deployed to Bosnia when I got there) was to escort a dude that had been deserted from the battalion for 8 years down to the brig in Quantico
He’d been gone so long no one in the battalion even remembered him
Anyways this cat had held 6 different jobs since being gone, arrested for petty shit, etc.
But he happened to break up a fight at a bar one night and the police ran everyone’s IDs and he finally got popped. 8 years later.
Systemic failure? Absolutely. And in the case of the Sutherland Springs shooter, two different ways. The crime of which he was convicted met the definition of domestic violence. So even if he was convicted of a crime qualifying as a misdemeanor, he should have been reported to NICS as ineligible to purchase a firearm after his court-martial sentence was approved by the CMCA on that basis alone. That didn’t happen. However, it turns out that the bastard had been convicted at a GCM by a crime for which he could have received more than a year in prison (and did, as I recall – I believe he got 2 yrs confinement and a BCD). So regardless of the type of discharge, he should have been reported to NICS by the USAF as ineligible to purchase firearms as the result of a felony conviction. ANY GCM conviction where the accused got (or could have gotten) a sentence of greater than 1 year qualifies as a felony under Federal law. That didn’t happen either. Ironically, the original reporting here states that these 4000+ individuals were individuals receiving DDs (and, presumably, dismissals – which are the legal equivalent for commissioned officers) who’d previously not been reported by DoD to NICS. So the Sutherland Springs shooter might have “slipped through the cracks” yet again – he didn’t receive a DD. Though convicted of a felony that qualified as domestic violence, he only received a BCD. Thus he would not have been reported this time, either. I’d give even money odds there are more like him out there that haven’t yet been reported to NICS by their service. Ditto for some number ineligible because of having been involuntarily committed for treatment (vice solely for observation) to a military psychiatric hospital. Getting this right shouldn’t be all that hard – it should be automatic when a sentence that disqualifies someone from owning a firearm is approved by the CMCA, or when someone is otherwise rendered ineligible by military medical or judicial authorities via a declaration they are mentally incompetent or involuntary commitment for psyhiactric treatment (not… Read more »
“Systemic failure”—government? Whoda thought?
Maybe those with the Big Chicken Dinner Bad Conduct Discharges should be permanently banned from firearms too?
The puke at Sutherland Springs should not have been out of prison for at least ten more years.
Sutherland Springs is a few miles from me and I am still absolutely livid about the fact that he was allowed out of prison while he was still young enough to have his own teeth.
This asswipe fractured the skull of an 18 month old child and beat the shit out of his significant other.
WHY IN THE FUCK was that piece of shit out of prison in the first place ???
The same shit as bergdahl, only time served, having numerous dead and wounded real men don’t matter. He feels really bad about it now…
The reason he snapped was that he was mad at his Mother in Law for not allowing him to have the same kid that he beat the shit out of.
No, the entire mess belongs on the shoulders of the Air Force Judge and the Military Justice System that allowed him to get out of prison without being too old to hold his pee without a Depends…
Fuck these people and fuck the assholes that let these pukes out of prison before they have gotten so old that they cannot be a threat to anyone…
I would toss in all other substandard discharges as well.
If your a shitbag that could not cut it,; to hell with you. You lose your privilege to own a firearm.
There is never enough time to do it right but always enough time to do it over.