by Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) - Destroying government records of firearm purchases after one day instead of three months could put guns in the hands of criminals who shouldn’t have them, congressional investigators say.
Attorney General John Ashcroft last year suggested shortening the time period that the government keeps records on people who try to purchase firearms from 90 days to no more than one business day.
But doing that would mean that the FBI, which conducts the checks, won’t be able to go back to look for fraudulent transactions or mistaken approvals, leading to “public safety implications,” the General Accounting Office said Tuesday.
Only seven out of the 235 illegal gun sales between July 2001 and January 2002 were noticed after one day, according to the GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress. Under a one-day rule, the other 228 criminals would have been able to keep their guns instead of having police take them away because the mistake never would have been caught, the agency said Tuesday.
The National Instant Criminal Background Check system, called NICS, electronically checks law enforcement records while gun buyers are waiting to make purchases. Felons, drug users and people subject to domestic violence restraining orders are among those prohibited from buying guns.
Gun rights groups say keeping the records is an invasion of privacy; gun control advocates say more time for auditing is necessary to ensure that guns are not be sold to criminals.
Ashcroft said he was trying to balance privacy concerns and the need to maintain the records for auditing purposes - both of which are required by the landmark Brady gun law that requires background checks for gun buyers.
But some records are missing or incomplete. If new information shows up within three months that proves the gun purchase should have been denied, the FBI calls local police and has the gun purchaser tracked down and the weapon confiscated.
But “the proposed policy requiring next-day destruction of NICS records would lessen the FBI’s ability to initiate firearm retrieval actions,” GAO officials said.
The Justice Department, in its response to the GAO report, said it was working to close that loophole. One suggestion would be to keep the firearm dealer’s ID number for three months and tracking down the person with the illegal gun through the dealer.
But the GAO said that wouldn’t be enough. When late information comes in that causes a gun purchase denial, the FBI usually checks the purchaser’s name to see if previous purchases were made in the past three months.
About one half of the 228 illegal gun purchases between July 2001 and January 2002 were related to earlier purchases, the agency said. “The FBI generally would not have been able to initiate these retrieval actions under DOJ’s proposed option,” the report said.
However, in the agency response, Assistant Attorney General Viet Dinh said also that there was nothing stopping the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from using other investigative avenues to find out whether the offender has other firearms.