Virginia's Background Check System

[mikeb302000]

http://hamptonroads.com.nyud.net/2011/11/another-fight-over-gun-checks">Hamptonroads.com reports on the efforts of some to disband the Virginia State background check system for gun purchases. Of course these are the same folks who oppose any and all gun control efforts. More reasonable voices explain the problem and offer a simple solution.

This week, the State Police reported 11 percent of its sworn workforce is vacant. The vacancy rate is even higher among its civilian staff. Its Firearms Transaction Center handles close to 800 requests every day, except Christmas, for background checks on gun buyers and is authorized to have 14 call-takers and 11 technicians. As of Tuesday, it had four call-takers and seven technicians - less than half its normal staffing level.

Returning that center - and the agency itself - to full strength would significantly reduce the delay associated with buying a firearm. And it would eliminate perhaps the only legitimate complaint about a state system critical to public safety and enforcement of Virginia's gun laws.

What do you think? Is it simply a redundant and wasteful exercise to have two systems in play, state and federal? Or, wouldn't it make sense that many people with histories of violence might be picked up in the State system but not in the federal, meanwhile, the feds might be better at catching out-of-state offenses?

But, isn't the whole discussion made academic and meaningless as long as private sales are unregulated?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.
http://mikeb302000.blogspot.com/">(cross posted at Mikeb302000)

[pipoman]

1. Hmmm

looks like Virginia, like most states, is over budget..

Services for seniors and pregnant teens, funding for local jails and libraries, and investigators who go after tax scofflaws are all on the chopping block under cuts proposed to Gov. Bob McDonnell late last month.

McDonnell asked state agencies in September to outline strategies for dealing with budget cuts of 2, 4 and 6 percent as he prepares his administration's first biennial spending plan. According to a document provided to The Washington Examiner by the governor's office, 10 state agencies identified 158 pages of reductions and eliminations to services, programs, personnel, buildings, grants and aid, in addition to ideas for consolidating offices, axing unnecessary positions and introducing new fees.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2011/11/va-state-agencies-prepare-budget-cuts#ixzz1eoXlSiAT

-snip-

Items he identified as expendable in the biennial budget included: $11.1 million in local aid for sheriffs, jails and commonwealth's attorneys; $2.9 million to assist pregnant teens and provide teenage pregnancy prevention programs; $1 million in various programs for seniors; and $1 million for public libraries.

He recommended against adopting some money-saving measures, including $37.2 million from closing 1,000 beds in correctional facilities, a $5 fee for tax refund checks sent by mail to generate $249,984 in new revenue, $678,620 for investigators who target tax cheats, and $1.2 million to close one of Virginia's two halfway houses, among hundreds of other proposals.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2011/11/va-state-agencies-prepare-budget-cuts

Then there's this..

A new national report shows that Virginia has cut funding for mental health programs by 9 percent since 2007, the 17th-largest such spending reduction in the country.

According to figures compiled by the National Alliance for Mental Illness, Virginia slashed $38.6 million from programs that help the mentally ill between fiscal 2007 and fiscal 2011, as the state sought to deal with the affects of the economic downturn that resulted in plummeting tax revenues.

Over that time, the number of people served in state hospitals dipped from 5,697 to 5,309, though the number aided by local community service boards rose from almost 122,000 to almost 163,400.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2011/03/va_budget_cuts_have_hit_mental.html

Now, where are the stats for the effectiveness of of this redundant background system. I mean surely there are stats showing why this redundant system is needed, no? No, apparently there isn't.

By all means keep this silly duplicate system in place and cut mental health services, release people from jails and prisons, and shrink law enforcement...good plan...that should help the "gun crime" rate..

[michreject]

2. Another clueless selfserving post

There is no redundancy.

States don't contact two agencies. If a state has no authorizing agency, then they contact the FBI, using the NICS system. In TN, the FFL contacts the TICS and no federal agency. I have a carry permit in MI. When I buy another gun (4 safes and counting), NO agency is contacted.

[mikeb302000]

7. thanks I didn't know that

you mean, it's either the state background check or the federal, not both?

[krispos42]

3. Your "less government" at work, Republicans. n/t

[S_B_Jackson]

4. Virginia is one of the many states in which the state background check is in lieu of

a direct call to the BATFE to perform an IDENTITICAL background check using the exact same FBI databases.

As usual, your inane argument is based upon a strawman of your own construction and simply constitutes more shameless blog-flogging.

[mikeb302000]

8. actually, I didn't know how it works.

It's even more fucked up and inadequate than I thought. No wonder you gun owners have such a bad rep as dangerous and unstable idiots capable of going berserk at any moment.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. But god bless you, not knowing anything, you sure as hell will keep posting about it.

[S_B_Jackson]

10. Nice of you to admit your absolute ignorance, but you then continue

to act upon it. Apparently you were never taught the adage: "Better to be silent and thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt."

What difference does it make, Mikey, if an ATF agent logs into and performs a records search into an FBI database shared by all law enforcement as compared to if a member of the Virginia State Police (or any of the 49 other states' police depts) logs into the exact same FBI database and performs the exact same search? Do you really think they're going to get a different result?

[rl6214]

11. Again throwing mindless shit out there when you don't know

WTF you are talking about. Maybe if you would do a little more research from your UN office instead of doing the work you are actually paid to do you would figure this out.

Wait, what am I saying, that's what you do and you still can't figure it our.

[Straw Man]

12. And you still don't.

It's even more fucked up and inadequate than I thought. No wonder you gun owners have such a bad rep as dangerous and unstable idiots capable of going berserk at any moment.

Were you not just told that it's the same database? What does it matter which agency -- state or federal -- is accessing it? The information is the same.

I was going to alert on this post for the pointless and irrelevant slanders, but on second thought I think it should remain as a textbook example of cluelessness and bigotry.

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

5. Well here we have...

...an instantiation of that ever popular internet phenomenon, the heap of semi-information.

But just to clear things up:

Virginia participates as a Point of Contact within the FBI's NICS. That means the Virginia Firearms Transaction Program© (VFTP) accesses records from the NCIC and data from the Virginia Criminal Records Exchange to provide to Virginia FFLs a near instant yea or nay to firearms transfers.

Virginia has elected to implement the Brady Program this way. It is Virginia Law. As I understand it, the Virginia Criminal Records Exchange is one of the best data sources in the country. These depositories are, however only as good as the information they receive. It is HERE where new funding is needed. County level court systems across the country may be slow or entirely derelict in the reporting of some adjudications to the state and federal data bases.

links:
NICS data
VFTP data

[ileus]

6. I normally clear the Va check in about 5 minutes or less...system works fast.