Posted on 12/24/2004 11:19:51 PM PST by neverdem
WOBURN, Mass., Dec. 24 - When Massachusetts this month became the first state to install an electronic instant-check system complete with a fingerprint scanner for gun licenses and gun purchases, the impact was quickly apparent.
On Wednesday, for example, moments after a court placed a woman's husband under a restraining order, a notice about the order popped up on a new computer terminal at the police station here. Given that information, the Woburn police went to the man's house and confiscated his guns, all 13 of them.
The computer is part of the record-check system and allows the police and gun stores to learn right away if a person can legally own or buy a firearm. The system provides instant updates on arrest warrants, restraining orders and convictions, and it links fingerprint scanners and computers at gun stores and police departments with a central database.
Under Massachusetts law, anyone wanting to buy a gun must first obtain a license from the local police department. Now, when a person applies for the license or goes to buy a gun, his fingerprints can be checked electronically to verify his identity.
"This is a quantum leap in improving public safety and also making it quicker for people to buy a firearm," said Edward A. Flynn, the Massachusetts secretary of public safety. The new computer system was developed by the state's Criminal History Systems Board, part of Mr. Flynn's office.
Philip Mahoney, the police chief in Woburn, a city of 38,000 people just north of Boston, said the new system was particularly valuable because "we get notified in real time about any new restraining orders, warrants and arrests."
Under the old system, based on paper records maintained at individual police stations and gun shops, Mr. Mahoney said, "we might not be notified at all if someone was put under a restraining order."
In the case this week, Mr. Mahoney said: "We were able to go to the individual's house immediately after the restraining order was issued, which is the most dangerous time for a batterer. It's a time when the victim is probably moving out, and the risk of violence is highest."
The new Massachusetts electronic system is in addition to the federal requirement that a gun buyer undergo an instant background check. That check is completed by telephone before the gun is sold, with a clerk in the gun store calling the F.B.I. or a state police agency.
Many of the same records are searched in both checks, but the national instant background check is not as up to date as the new Massachusetts system, particularly for restraining orders, and does not require fingerprint verification.
Mr. Flynn said his office was working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to try to consolidate the two checks in Massachusetts.
So far there has been no outcry against the new system from gun owners or the state's gun stores.
"Basically, it's all the same information we had to submit before, so this is not more intrusive," said Carl Ingrao, the owner of Four Seasons Firearms in Woburn. His business is the largest gun store in Massachusetts and was used in a pilot project testing the system beginning last June.
"I haven't had any negative comments from customers whatsoever, and I've sold over 2,000 firearms since the system went into effect," Mr. Ingrao said.
"The computer is actually quicker, more efficient and less expensive for the dealer," he said, because under the old paper system each form cost 50 cents, not including the postage for mailing a copy to the Criminal History Systems Board. Mr. Ingrao says he believes the new system will save him about $2,000 a year.
The electronic system is also faster because once a purchaser's identity is confirmed by the fingerprint scan, the computer automatically fills in the buyer's address, date of birth, height, weight and hair and eye color. That data comes from the gun license application.
"A few months ago, they had to take the system down for a day for a software upgrade, and we had to go back to filling out all the old paperwork," Mr. Ingrao said. "My clerks were saying, 'Hey, the computer is better.' "
Gun owners and the gun industry have often complained that background checks are onerous because they take too much time and prevent people from just walking in and buying a gun when they want to. Mr. Flynn said the new system was an effort to answer that criticism by speeding the process.
By law, police departments in Massachusetts have had 45 days to issue a firearms license. But with the instant check system, the police should be able to issue the license in 24 to 48 hours, Mr. Flynn said, and then a customer with a license will be able to buy a gun in a few minutes.
So far, computer terminals linked to the system have been installed in 159 of the state's 351 police departments and at the four largest gun dealers. The goal is to have them installed in all departments and gun stores by next June, Mr. Flynn said.
A customer at Four Seasons Firearms who collects handguns said he had no objection to the electronic system "because I have nothing to hide."
The customer, who declined to be identified, echoing the concerns of many gun owners about their privacy, added: "The law-abiding gun owners are always put on the defensive when some nut shoots someone. The media makes us out to be the bad guys, but we are just following the law."
From what the article seems to be saying, he was not buying any gun; he was just issued a RO and then the police dept. was printed up the RO in his name. They then pulled his file and decided to steal his guns.
Welcome to the Total Information Awareness society, comrade.
Here's one (and a recurring topic, at that) for the CWII ping list.
My bad- I read it as he ordered a frearm and the check was run.
However THIS IS EVEN WORSE! now an RO is filed and the firearms ARE STOLEN by the cops.
Why wasn't she arrested for B&E,felony theft?
Yep... total information awareness - except for the guy who is the unfortunate subject of the restraining order. Some jurisdictions do spell out the specifics to the people (usually men) who find themselves on the receiving end of a domestic restraining order, but for the most part there is a tremendous disconnect between the state courts and the federal laws on this issue.
I'd love to see Lautenberg's cancerous piece of legislation thrown in the surgical scrap tray, but I suspect that if anything changes, it will be that domestic restraining orders will be accompanied by some formalized advisory language, a~la Miranda. Until then, the ignorance of the people will continue to work in government's favor on this issue. Hitler spoke the truth, you know, when he said: "What good fortune for governments that the people do not think."
No, not in MA. In MA they intend to get as many guns out of the hands of the citizens as possible.
If the people running MA now were in charge back in 1770, MA would still be ruled by The Crown.
Mark
http://www.fee.org/vnews.php?nid=3942
Unintended concenquences.
It's fine and good to post the Mass state constitution, but bear in mind that that place is Ground Zero for "living document" jurisprudence, and so it means whatever the Liberal Democrat sitting on the bench thinks it means in the instant of decision.
Precedents? Why, if we expected judges to read precedents, we'd have to require judges to be literate, and that would be prejudiced against Moron-Americans.
For all the bearing the state constitution has on the law, it could be three random pages out of Tolkien.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
I am waiting for the inevitable... even the spouses and family members of divorced men and women will be unable to have guns, they might let the "condemned without a trial" sub-citizen living in their home, actually have access to the gun as well.
It's only a matter of time. One woman goes nuts, steals a gun from her brother in law's drawer, and then kills her ex hubby.... NOW we will need laws to do FAMILY and KNOWN ASSOCIATE background checks prior to registration or purchase of a weapon of self defense.
one click at a time the noose is tightening around the twitching corpse of what USED to be our constituton...
If you get a parking ticket, and it is not paid, they can already take away your rights. Soon coming on library books that are overdue as well.
"Is it soup yet?"
We weren't divorced yet and the DA said that legally the posession of the gun, house and accounts had not yet been settled--that she cannot break into her own property and as long as she doesn't 'dispose' of the items, it's legal...
I was told exactly that by the Special Commissioner of my county when I asked for a TPO against her. He admitted in open hearing that without injuries or a proveable threat a man cannot get a restraining order against a woman in NM. I then asked him (after the hearing): "So, you're telling me that as a man the law doesn't work for me?"
He said: "That is, unfortunately, a true statement."
How pissed off do you think I am about this!?
As you should be.
Just damn.
Is all this crap over yet?
Political Correctness + Political Expediency = Rights Overturned!
I still remember when "experts" sagely advised me that such efforts on the part of Gov. Org. could never happen in America, they would require too much computer memory!
Tends to make you wonder occasionally if all our tech progress is actually benign in the absence of true conservative progress.
The "Lautenberg Amendment" is unconstitutional on it's face!
It is clearly "ex post facto", and so is forbidden by the constitution.
It was "passed" by subterfuge, stuck deep into a "must pass" spending bill at the last possible moment.
SCOTUS has already ruled that any "law" which is unconstitutional is "Null and Void" from it's inception, without substance, as if it had never been passed.
So the Lautenberg Amendment is null and void, or will be as soon as they try to apply it to a Billionaire who sicks his legal team on it.
Or maybe we could band together for once, and support Ron Paul's bill to repeal it?
Probably easier, Gov. Org. tends not to go after too many billionaire gun owners for "spousal abuse".
Shuuuush!
You're not supposed to remember that!
Off to PC sensitivity retraining with you!
(Several independent studies confirm that domestic battery is committed by women against men on almost equal numerical basis as men against women, the men just don't talk about it nearly as much.)
Do it for the children, eh?
CW II ping. Chosing a state to live in becomes more and more important. If you haven't read Boston T. Party's "Molon Labe" you should. Ditto for Ross's "Unintended Consequences" and Travis's (writing under his real name) excellent "Enemies Foreign and Domestic" What was fiction 5 years ago is fact now.
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