Reporting problem
Mayors Against Guns says the NICS background check system is underfunded. That’s not really true. The issue with the system is certain things are not reported, like mental health records or the Army not letting NICS know the Tucson shooter was rejected for marijuana use.
January 17th, 2011 at 10:45 am
Did you hear Bloomberg is against the magazine capacity ban?
January 17th, 2011 at 11:06 am
Ok my brain is failing to parse your third sentence.
January 17th, 2011 at 11:12 am
because i suck at typing.
January 17th, 2011 at 12:59 pm
Not a fan of the idea of getting on the NICS list simply because of a failed piss test, which have a significant error rate.
January 17th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
[…] or the Army not letting NICS know the Tucson shooter was rejected for marijuana use.
As it shouldn’t.
Not only because, as Robert says, a drug test can easily be inaccurate.
Apart from the civil rights issue of automatic bans for mere use of drugs (which is not yet being reflected in jurisprudence or law, but I bet there’ll be some juicy court cases soon, what with recent precedent suggesting that maybe it’s not okay to just DQ people for non-violent offenses of whatever sort), there’s the problem that the statutes (reflected on form 4473) ban “addicts or unlawful users of” the drugs.
Having been one, past tense, is not a disqualifying condition.
Currently being one is.
Being kept out of the Army even for an accurate drug test proves only that one used the drug then, not that one still is an unlawful user and thus disqualified.
A complete pothead, heroin addict, or meth-fiend is not – assuming an otherwise clean record – disqualified from purchasing a firearm, legally, if they stop using.
(The precedents are pretty clear that “stopping using” means they have to actually stop seriously for some length of time.
Stopping “for the duration of signing the 4473”, for instance, would be laughed out of court by any judge, and quite reasonably – at least in terms of applying the statute, rather than questioning its Constitutionality.)
January 18th, 2011 at 7:30 pm
The Army didn’t refuse to enlist the shooter becuase of a piss test.
He stated on his paperwork he was a current heavy user of marijuana.
That be a disqualifying, non-waiverable, bar to enlistment, yo.
Honetly, with the questions like ths one where they aren;t really going to verify the answers, recruiters will tell you how quickly they cease to be surprised at how many people answer “Yes”.