BIDS vs NICS

BIDS v. NICS

If we must have gun-buyer background checks to stop criminals, at least do it without compiling massive records on the innocent.

A simple system called BIDS can do this, and at far less cost than NICS.

Basically, BIDS distributes the list of hardcore prohibited possessors to federally licensed firearm dealers. Dealers check their customers against the computerized list to lockout illegal sales. This maintains the privacy of innocent citizens and eliminates the potential for illegal government registries. It's simple. It's cheap. It works. Do it.

BIDS: “Blind Identification Database System”

by Alan Korwin, Author Gun Laws of America

It sticks in my craw, and I know I’m not alone in recognizing, that under the guise of reducing violence, the Brady handgun violence prevention law has put every retail gun sale in the country under control of our federalized leaders. The idea that I need federal permission to buy private property is outrageous to me. It is not what I think of when I think of freedom. The fact that the property could be used dangerously, or that criminals use the property illegally and immorally, does not adequately justify the usurpation of my freedoms, as it has done. Despite the seemingly noble intent of the law to restrict criminals, criminals are largely unaffected. Criminals who want to arm themselves, which after all is what criminals do, simply arm themselves anyway, as they have done since time immemorial, and laugh at the law. The biggest net effect of the law seems to be record keeping on innocent purchasers, to the tune of about ten million records a year. We are assured in law and in public statements from our federalized leaders that the records are not permanent, so they can’t be used against us. Few people believe that. There is no way to tell for sure. Past history suggests it’s false.

The next biggest effect is perhaps a federal jobs program. Precise figures are unavailable, but when the program was initiated, 900 clerks were hired to sit in FBI paid-for cubicles, answer phone calls from firearm dealers nationwide, and type the names of prospective buyers into a database for storage. And a background check. Countless support and technical jobs were created to run the FBI’s long-sought single-location citizen checking system. The Clarksville, W. Va., facility is now the heart of all FBI people tracking for the entire planet.

Initially, attorney general Janet Reno actually had the gall to say the quarter-billion-dollar computer they had built for the task could not erase records at all, let alone instantly, as the enabling act required. How dumb do they think we are. This from the team that now assures us records are not kept.

A minor effect, but an important one, is that the requirement to use the NICS background check system before a sale is completed, gives those in control the power to turn off gun sales nationwide (or regionally) at the flip of a switch. As they have done numerous times in the past, the system is turned off for maintenance, or for tests, or it goes down as such systems do, and gun sales grind to a complete halt until the feds turn the system back on. Again, not what I think of when I think of freedom.

More at gunlaws.com here