[url]http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/20010628/t000053218.html[/url] <-- Original story.
[url]http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b3b2ae53750.htm[/url] <-- Commentary there.

Anybody have a TV handy?  I dont have one at work, and the latest news would be good.

Kharn

Any news yet?

[8P]

btt

Here we go:
(reprinted from: [url]http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b3b7cd03424.htm[/url])

ATTY. GEN. ASHCROFT: A top priority of this administration and this Department of Justice is reducing gun crime by the vigorous enforcement of the national's gun laws. The Brady Act, enacted in 1994, requires that all federally licensed gun dealers perform a background check before selling a firearm. The Brady Law helps us stop convicted felons and other dangerous individuals from buying guns easily.

Today I am announcing a plan to improve the process of background checks on gun buyers, a plan which will achieve two major objectives. The first objective is to increase prosecutions of those who attempt to purchase guns illegally. The second is to improve the accuracy, efficiency and reliability of the national instant criminal background check system, a system we call NICS.

Just a few weeks ago, President Bush unveiled Project Safe Neighborhoods, a comprehensive national strategy to enforce vigorously existing gun laws.

Federal law makes it a felony for convicted felons and other dangerous persons even to possess a gun. Federal law also makes it a felony for convicted felons and other dangerous individuals to lie about their records in attempting to buy a gun. Violation of these laws carries penalties of up to 10 years in prison. Violators can and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The reality, however, is that Brady Act violations are not being prosecuted adequately. From Brady's enactment in 1994 through June 5th of this year, the FBI has referred 217,000 attempted illegal gun purchases for investigation. Of these, only 294 people have been convicted. We can, we should, and we must do a better job of preserving the integrity of our gun laws in the eyes of the citizens who are expected to obey these laws.

Today I am directing all U.S. attorneys to prosecute to the fullest extent practicable persons who attempt to purchase guns illegally. To provide prosecutors with the tools they need, the Department of Justice is targeting 113 new prosecutors in the areas with the highest levels of gun crime.

In some areas, we will double or triple the number of federal prosecutors devoted to the prosecution of gun crimes. Phoenix; Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; Miami, Florida; Atlanta, Georgia; Chicago, Illinois; New Orleans; Baltimore; Detroit; St. Louis; New York, northern Ohio; Philadelphia; Puerto Rico; Houston; eastern Virginia; Milwaukee -- all of these areas are receiving needed assistance to prosecute Brady Act violations and other gun crimes.

Secondly, today I am issuing a series of directives to make the national instant criminal background check system a more reliable and efficient tool to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and other dangerous persons.

I'm directing the FBI to increase to the fullest extent practicable the percentage of the NICS checks that result in an immediate response of "proceed" or "denied" while the dealer who is proposing the sale is still on the telephone. Currently 71 percent of calls are given an immediate response. I'm directing the FBI to explore ways to increase this number to 90 percent, the highest level practicable given the current state of criminal history records in our system.
(Cont)

(Cont)

The back check system is only as good as the criminal records it contains. Many of the over 62 million criminal history records note an arrest but fail to specify how the arrest was resolved. That makes it impossible for the NICS examiner to know the outcome of the case.

The Brady law permits transfer of a gun if no disposition of record can be found within three days. A recent FBI study found that between April and December of the year 2000 over 45,000 applicants with an open arrest record were allowed to purchase guns because the three-day requirement was not met. Improving the criminal history records will decrease this number, and it will speed up the approval process for law-abiding purchasers.

I am therefore also directing the Bureau of Justice Statistics to conduct a comprehensive, state-by-state review of missing or incomplete criminal history records, including adjudication records of cases regarding competence in mental illness and domestic violence. Based on that review, the Bureau of Justice Statistics will target its grants to those states where improving records repository would have the impact most therapeutic on the background check system by closing the gaps in our awareness of criminal records.


ATTY GEN. ASHCROFT: Well, when you look at the Brady mandate or the Brady law, there are two competing aspirations in the Brady law. The first says -- is that we should limit the access of certain individuals -- dangerous individuals, convicted felons -- to guns, and the second says that we need to protect the privacy of individuals.

Balancing those interests is important, and the maintenance of records of gun purchases is prohibited by the act, except to the extent necessary.

And we believe that we can have the kind of accurate auditing that is recommended by the computer industry for the conduct of these kinds of checks in a very quick time frame and that it would be inappropriate, consistent with the mandate of the law, to require a further maintenance of those records than is necessary. The intent of the law is, one, to protect the privacy of legitimate gun dealers and, second, to have a capacity for auditing. We are confident the capacity for auditing in a real-time setting can be done.

Most of us are familiar with real-time auditing of telephone transactions regarding computers and databases. We frequently call now to get information, and you'll hear things like "This phone is being recorded" for purposes of checking and verifying the integrity and value of the phone call, and those kinds of auditing procedures are the kinds of procedure which best guarantee the integrity of those events, and those are the kind that we would move toward.

*****
Thats all, he was not asked any questions about the NICS revisions, only about the Microsoft case announcement that was made at the same time.

Kharn