[The KG9 Kid]

NRA supported 'Instant-Check' over the Brady Bill's waiting period. The system might have worked to prevent the VT killer from getting his guns via FFL transfer if it weren't for HIPAA and it's nutjob-to-doctor medical confidentiality policy from the HHS.

Seems to me that this is a Democrat policy contradiction: They demanded (and got) the Brady Bill which would supposedly prevent mental nutcases from lawfully acquiring firearms, then two years later they sealed the HHS medical confidentiality rules under HIPAA so tightly that they wailed like an alley cat when the Patriot Act permitted the government to open a person's medical records in the interests of 'National Security'.

They can't have it both ways, damn it.

Let the Democrats go in front of their voter base and say that they're relaxing HIPAA's vault-like medical confidentiality rules to allow FBI background checks on handgun transfers.

[spunkets]

"HIPAA"

The relevant law is 18USC922(g)(4), which regards court records, not medical records. Those court records which contain a judicial finding that the person is a danger to self, or others, due to mental defect, should be in the DOJ's NICS dbase.