OFF THE WIRE
By David Codrea
Our bad -- your problem.
USA – -(
Ammoland.com)- Lessons
learned from one man’s struggle to challenge a gun purchase denial from
the National Instant Check System give insights into how difficult it
can be for a citizen to clear his name once the government has decided
he’s a “prohibited person.” Fortunately, an Anchorage medical
professional and “avid gun collector” [name withheld at his request] had
the savvy, the wherewithal and the persistence to successfully fight a
bureaucratic denial of his right to arms.
A former U.S. Army
officer with a clean record that includes not so much as a speeding
ticket in the past 10 years, albeit with one inadvertent self-reported
fish and game violation in 2004, the doctor attempted to purchase a
rifle at Cabela’s in Anchorage Alaska in early November. His first
background check was delayed and then it was denied a few days later.
As an aside, the doctor says he has purchased many firearms over the
last decade with no trouble. He immediately filed an appeal letter
online and after multiple tries at trying to reach a live human, got a
recording saying FBI was currently evaluating appeals from August 2015,
putting them one year and three months behind even looking at his
appeal.
“This was unreasonable,” he noted with extreme
understatement, “so I created a plan to expedite my appeal. I
immediately filled out my appeal online when I received the denial.
“I contacted my congressman, Don Young, and his office sent a
congressional inquiry to the FBI NICS,” the doctor continued. “And I
completed my concealed carry course and turned in all the needed
information to the background evaluation officer at the Alaska State
Troopers. This agent evaluates your finger prints and other data to
determine if you are eligible for your CCW permit. This agent also
communicates with the FBI NICS.
“I sent another copy of my finger
prints to NICS for evaluation,” he concluded. The end result was that
the denial was overturned. The process took about four weeks vs. a
year-and-a-half, but it required significant effort on my part.”
And
the reason for the initial denial, for withholding a fundamental right
for an undetermined period and without due process, and for making a
citizen go through extraordinary measures, including recruiting the
assistance of a United States Congressman in order to not get hung out
to dry by a bureaucratic snafu?
“The fingerprints you submitted
are not identical with those in a record used in the evaluation of your
attempt to possess or receive a firearm,” a weasel-worded Department of
Justice attempt at excuse-making without admitting fault (or heaven
forbid apologizing for rejecting the wrong guy) offered as
justification. “Based on further review and investigation, we have been
able to determine you are eligible to possess or receive a firearm. The
FBI Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division’s NICS Section
Firearm Appeal Certificate is enclosed.
“If more than 30 days
have elapsed since the initial background check, the FBI must recheck
the NICS before allowing the firearm transfer,” the letter warned.
They had.
Reading
about how bureaucratically rigid and wrong the government can be may
make for forehead-slapping and head-shaking, but to a person trapped in
their errors, it’s no laughing matter. As Martin Luther King Jr.
observed, “A right delayed is a right denied,” and that’s not supposed
to happen under our Constitution without due process.
Researcher John Lott has documented the preponderance of “
false positives” in his warnings against Brady background checks. That’s also a real danger in the latest bit of “
bipartisan”
rights denial being pushed under the “No Fly/No Buy” slogan. And it
shows yet another downside to the Bloomberg “background check” mandates
designed to end all private sales plus establish identifying data needed
for a registration system (“Effectiveness depends on the ability to
reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…” —
National Institute of Justice).
As
noted, had this doctor been a person of lesser drive, someone who did
not know how to go about righting a wrong and staying with it to
completion, he’d still be in limbo. And there’s no guarantee the
bureaucrats would make things right when they finally got around to
trying to undo the sloppy work that led to the denial in the first
place.
A “happy ending” — that should have never had a beginning.
