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.

BIDS: “Blind Identification Database System”

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.

A system to prevent illegal firearm sales and illegal gun owner registration

by Brian Puckett and Russ Howard

Summary

In the 20th century, gun registration and other gun controls in various countries facilitated the murders of an estimated 169 million people or more by leaving them defenseless against criminal governments, in a phenomenon known as democide. Peoples’ own governments, not criminals or accidents, are the greatest source of homicide known to humanity.

In the United States, the existence of publicly held or even privately held lists of gun owners could enable a future tyrannical government to confiscate firearms and imprison or murder actual or suspected gun owners. Nearly every genocide in the last century began with gun lists, gun registrations and gun confiscations. The stunning video Innocents Betrayed documents this fact as a precursor to one atrocity after another.

The National Instant Background Check System (NICS), implemented by the Brady law, makes it possible for the government to illegally build dangerous gun-buyer lists, even though that is specifically banned by the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act. Whether those lists are being compiled is the subject of much debate, not subject to convincing verification either way, and the very ability is a threat to American freedom.

In addition, the Gun Control Act of 1968 requires gun dealers to keep records that could be seized, and a national registry from those records, turned in by dealers going out of business, is rumored to flow into a database technically banned by law. Again, confirmation of that either way, is unreliable. Besides normal dealer closures since 1968, the Clinton administration drove two thirds of America's dealers out of business through law and regulatory changes. By 2001, over 100 million of these records were reportedly in federal hands.

To avoid gun registration and protect the Constitution, while still enabling gun dealers to avoid selling to criminals, the authors propose to replace NICS with a Blind Identification Database System, BIDS.

Each gun dealer would have a list of all persons prohibited from buying guns. Instead of a government background check, dealers themselves would check potential buyers against the list. BIDS would list firearms disabilities, but not the reasons for disabilities. Since buyer names would not go to the government, it could not build dangerous registries. Dealers would no longer have to retain records that identify buyers, and would be prohibited from doing so without disclosure to customers. This prevents the government from registering buyers by seizing dealer records.

BIDS will be computer based and simply automatically updated online, like antiviral programs or software updates. It would be encrypted for privacy, and like the current NICS system, could only be used lawfully by dealers for checking prospective buyers. Violations in its use, which can be easily verified, jeopardizes the dealer’s license to operate.

Internet access is convenient but not essential, since the list could also be provided on disk or even in hardcopy, updated by mail. Because criminal sentences are public information, the identity of nearly all prohibited persons does not present a serious privacy issue, and the data can only be used for the intended purpose.

A percentage of buyers may initially be wrongly rejected by BIDS, as they are by NICS, and robust rights-restoration and record-correction features are integral parts of the system. BIDS would end the potential for registration endemic under the current system.

Because the dealers use the system at the point of sale, the huge federal staffs employed by NICS could be disbanded, yielding significant budget savings. The effort needed to maintain the BIDS list, which is part-and-parcel of routine law enforcement work, is already accomplished primarily in the NCIC and III systems, and represents no additional cost.

BIDS does the exact same job as NICS, with less effort from dealers (it eliminates the 10 million phone calls currently required annually), with identical dealer-compliance requirements and punishments for failure to comply, saves taxpayers buckets of money, and prevents the very dangerous prospect of government compiled lists of innocent gun owners.

BIDS is the right policy choice as a replacement for the antiquated and expensive NICS system, and should be implemented without delay.

See the full proposal at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20041011193347/www.keepandbeararms.com/puckett/bids.asp