The Brady Law is still working to block handgun sales to convicted felons, domestic abusers, the mentally ill and other prohibited purchasers, according to a report released today by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. In 1997 alone, 69,000 people who were prohibited by law from buying handguns were denied access to these lethal weapons due to background checks. In the four years since the Brady Law was implemented, an estimated 242,000 ineligible purchasers have been stopped from buying handguns.
Sarah Brady
June 21, 1998
Sarah Brady Statement on Justice Dept. Report on Brady Law Success
[I find it exceedingly telling that the Brady’s measure their success in terms of the number of people denied the purchase of a firearm. I contend the only valid measurement of the success of a restriction on firearms is whether the average person is made safer by that restriction. In other words the Brady measure ignores safety and celebrates the blocking of people from exercising a specific enumerated civil right.–Joe]
Doesn’t say how many refusals were revisited and approved.
The real number is 73. That’s the latest data from 2006.
http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2008/12/report_on_brady.php
An expensive waste of time.
However, in its role as a means for the federal government to directly interfere in every retail firearm transaction, and to make a database of armed citizens, it has been a resounding success.
If last year 69,000 persons failed their background checks on a firearm purchase, due to their being felons trying to buy a firearm, why aren’t there 69,000 felony prosecutions underway or completed to get the criminals off the street? This would go a long way toward making their home cities safer places, don’t ya think?
And if there are not 69,000 felons being so prosecuted, doesn’t that make you think the Brady check failures were for technical violations or errors, not because felons were trying to buy guns through licensed dealers?
Either way, if the local prosecutors don’t see a slam dunk felony firearm conviction with mandatory severe jail time as a route to crime reduction, why bother with any more gun laws?