Arizona, Up Slightly From Bottom, Is 1/20th of Top Registration Rate
Over the weekend, Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) issued a press release pointing out that 28 states have submitting less than 100 mental health records to the background check database for gun sales--a major flaw in the existing system that allowed Jared Loughner to slip through the cracks and buy two guns he should not have been able to purchase. What's more, 21 states have submitted less than 10 such records, including 10 that have submitted none at all.
Arizona, perhaps surprisingly is not one of them--though it was as recently as four years ago, before a new law was passed that remains severely underfunded--about 1/20th the intended funding level. But Arizona is still far below where it should be. The number of records Arizona has submitted--5,036--amounts to 78.8 per 100,000 residents, a rate less than 1/20th that of Virginia, the state with the highest level of compliance, which has submitted 139,185 records--1,739.6 per 100,000 residents. Virginia's rate is almost double that of Michigan in second place--989.8 per 100,000--and more than double New York in third--799.7 per 100,000. This leaves more than a million records out of the system--one of the biggest flaws in the existing system. From the press release:
The Tucson shooter, Jared Loughner, bought a shotgun and passed a background check less than a year after he was rejected from the Army in 2008 for habitual drug use. He should have failed the shotgun background check, but he didn't because his record wasn't in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). He went on to buy a second gun, which he used to murder 6 people and injure 13 others.
Federal law prohibits dangerous people including felons, the mentally ill, and drug users from buying or possessing guns. But these people too often slip through the cracks and pass background checks because many key records are not in the database. At Virginia Tech, Seung Hui Cho was declared mentally ill by a judge, thereby barring him from gun possession under federal law - but his record was never submitted to NICS. Cho was then able to pass a background check and buy the guns he used to kill 32 people.
In response to Virginia Tech, Congress unanimously passed the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, which was designed to improve reporting into the system. It requires that all federal agencies report relevant records into NICS, and it created a system of incentives for states to improve their reporting.
But federal data from August 2010 show there is a wide disparity in states' compliance.
The chart on the flip shows how state compliance stood in 2006, before the new law was passed, and how compliance stood as of August 31, 2010, and total records submitted by each state per capita.
In addition, the poll MAIG just released has three questions related to this issue, all of which show strong support for fixing it. Gun owners and the general public agree in equal numbers on all three questions asked:
90% supporting fixing the gaps in government databases that are meant to prevent the mentally ill, drug abusers and others from buying guns
89% support fully funding the enforcement of the law Congress passed after the Virginia Tech massacre to prevent people with a history of mental illness from buying guns
83% support the broader proposition of fully enforcing gun laws currently on the books--which encompases both of the above.
Clearly, more than half the states aren't even going through the motions.
The press release adds:
Counting additional submissions by federal agencies, the FBI reported total size of the NICS "Mental Defective/Committed" file to total 1,107,758 records, as of December, 31 2010. According to estimates from the General Accounting Office, at least another 1.5 million disqualifying mental health records are still missing from the file, as well as millions more missing records on various other types of prohibited purchasers....
Many states have made little or no progress reporting, largely because from FY 2009 through FY 2011 Congress appropriated only 5.3% of the amount authorized by the NICS Improvement Amendments Act in grants to states to improve reporting.
Actually, the GAO estimate is quite conservative. If other states matched Virginia's rate, the database would have over 4.6 million records--just projecting from the 40 states that submitted any records at all.
Finally, MAIG calls attention to frustration of victims' family members:
The failure to promptly put all relevant records into the database has frustrated some family members of Virginia Tech victims.
"Although the number of records submitted to the federal gun background check system has increased since the NICS Improvement Act was enacted in January 2008, it is clear that the system is still broken, said Peter Read, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.), father of Mary Read, who was killed at Virginia Tech. "It's been over 3 years since my daughter and 31 others were shot and killed at Virginia Tech because of a broken and inadequate background check system. Now, it has happened again. Enough is enough."
More information can be found by reading the Mayors Against Illegal Guns' letter calling for full funding of the NICS Improvement Act, here.
Finally, here's the more complete breakdown of views on the three questions in the poll directly related to this issue:
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