Gun law ‘No check, no sale’ should move forward

It is disturbing, and potentially tragic, that a commonsense initiative to tighten the country’s system for background checks on prospective gun purchasers is wallowing in Congress some eight months after the bill was introduced by Connecticut senators Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy.

They introduced the so-called “No check, No sale” bill last October and, even more disturbing is the fact that the number of people who’ve bought guns without a complete background check has grown.

From 2014 to 2017, according to Think Progress, a news website, the percentage of people purchasing a gun without a complete background check rose from 2.8 to about 3.6 percent.

The 3.6 percent figure translates into more than 300,000 people purchasing a gun in 2017 without the federally licensed firearms dealer finishing a background check because 72 hours had elapsed, the deadline set by law for the FBI to finish its work.

The 72-hour window came about as a compromise. Background checks were first mandated under the 1993 so-called Brady Law, which required states to impose a five-day waiting period before someone could buy a firearm to allow time for a thorough check.

But as the country’s computerized backgroundcheck system — the National Instant Criminal Background Check System — developed further, gun rights advocates pushed for the shorter deadline so the delay would not hold up a lawful sale.

This, though, is a matter that goes far beyond inconveniencing a lawful gun purchaser.

The impetus for Blumenthal’s action was the 2015 incident in which Dylann Roof, a deranged white supremacist, killed nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., using a firearm he never should have had.

Roof had a felony conviction the year before that should have prevented him from buying a gun.

The charge went undetected during the 72-hour period because of bureaucratic confusion over which South Carolina jurisdiction was responsible for his prosecution.

So there is no question that simply extending the 72-hour waiting period is not the sole answer to the problem.

The FBI later admitted confusion in Roof’s background check, prompting an investigation into their procedures.

What became obvious were gaps in the efficiency of the FBI’s system, which relies on information provided by the individual states.

That process needs to be as close to air-tight as possible. Unreported information on convictions, mental illness and other disqualifying factors, we have sadly learned, costs lives.

Gun advocates rightly argue that more effort has to be put into communication and technology to make sure that, for instance, something like the Roof felony does not show up in the check.

Even Mark Barden, the founder and managing director of Sandy Hook Promise, a group formed after the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, said there’s “room for improvement across the board,” including giving more resources to agencies involved with background check processing.

But while that work is done, Congress has to move to the position that no gun sale occurs without a complete background check.

It goes far beyond inconvenience.