Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) authored a bill that mandates an audit of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). This is not the first time that Massie has pushed this idea. Amazingly, the bill passed by a 380 to 47 vote.
For years, Dr. John Lott has pointed out the errors in the NICS system and its discriminatory nature (2018 oped in the New York Times, 2021 oped in the Wall Street Journal). The New York Times refused to run any mentions of how these errors discriminate against minorities and their title was also misleading, as I was arguing that background checks could be fixed.
“This incredibly high rate of false positives imposes a real burden on the most vulnerable people,” said Reagan Dunn, the first national coordinator for Project Safe Neighborhoods, a Justice Department program started in 2001 to ensure gun laws are enforced.
John R. Lott, Jr., “Background Checks Are Not the Answer to Gun Violence,” The New York Times, February 12, 2018.
This is from the Wall Street Journal:
First, while President Biden and other Democrats claim that three million prohibited people have been stopped from buying guns because of background checks, that is false. There is a massive error rate in the background-check system. Some 99% of the denials are law-abiding people who are improperly stopped.
The system discriminates most against black and Hispanic males. When I worked at the U.S. Justice Department, I saw data showing that the error rate for black males was more than three times their share of the population; for Hispanic males, 2.5 times. I pointed out that this could be easily fixed if the federal government held its own background checks to the same standard as private companies.
John R. Lott, Jr., “The School That Wasn’t There: I drove 950 miles to give a commencement address. It was an elaborate hoax by a gun-control organization,” Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2021.
A copy of the bill is available here.
0 Comments