When Is a Gunowner Database Not a Registry?
November 10, 2004
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
One of the main tenets of gun control dogma is the permanent establishment of government lists of gunowners and their guns. Ideally, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its allies would establish a massive national registry of every single gunowner and the firearms each possesses.
They like to claim that this is an important tool for law enforcement investigations, but there is little, if any, evidence that such registries would accomplish much more than existing investigative tools, including the federal tracing system. Most criminals acquire their arms outside the legal, federally regulated commerce in firearms.
Needless to say, this leads most opponents of national gun registration to believe that the real purpose of such registries—at best—is to facilitate harassment of law-abiding gunowners under the pretext of criminal investigations, or to simplify gun confiscation and total civilian disarmament—at worst.
The anti-gunners always deny that confiscation and total eradication of private gun ownership is their purpose, but their actions in supporting every kind of gunowner registry or database—at the state or federal level—contradicts their denials. They have fought to keep them all and they have made the issue of FBI retention of lists of approved firearms purchasers a major complaint against the Justice Department, Attorney General John Ashcroft and President George W. Bush. They were happier in the days when the Clinton Administration and Attorney General Janet Reno were keeping such registries in spite of statutory prohibitions.
Some Success
At the state level, the anti-gunners got some of what they wanted from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in October, but their spinmeisters were quick to use that court ruling to push for more registries and to castigate Ashcroft and the President.
The state Supreme Court decision in the Keystone State involves a suit brought four years ago by the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League (ACLS) and individual gunowners against the governor and the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) for building a database that retained the names, addresses and Social Security numbers of law-abiding gunowners gleaned from Pennsylvania point-of-contact (POC) background checks for all prospective gun buyers in accordance with the Brady Act. Pennsylvania does not retain the background check records on long gun sales.
The ACLS suit contended that the records of sales database should have been destroyed as stated in section 6111.4 of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act prohibiting the maintenance of gun “ownership records.”
ACLS contends that in regard to handgun background check records, the PSP is required to comply with the Brady regulations and destroy the records. This was made perfectly clear in a June 15, 2001 letter from the Criminal Justice Information Services Division of the FBI in response to their audit of the State Police to ascertain Pennsylvania’s level of compliance with federal rules and regulations relating to the National Instant Check System (NICS). In that letter the FBI cited the PSP by saying: “The data contained in the Record of Sales Database is in violation of 18 US Code Section 922 which prohibits retaining such data in excess of 180 days (now 24 hours) if the firearms transfer is allowed. Therefore, the existence of the Record of Sale Database is in violation of federal legislation.”
State Question
The October court decision, however, did not determine whether the records being retained by the PSP are legal under federal law; ACLS was testing Pennsylvania law that prohibits the creation of a registry of firearm owners. ACLS noted that the federal question still needs to be decided.
What the Brady Campaign did not report from the decision was that the court agreed that, “The database does not maintain a record of all firearms owned by Pennsylvanians, which would include long guns, or firearms that are owned by Pennsylvanians, but not purchased in the Commonwealth. Additionally, the database of handgun sales does not include handguns that are transferred between spouses, parents and children, and grandparents and grandchildren. See 18 PaCS § 6111(c). Nor is the database a survey of existing ownership.”
Apparently, the court does have some kind of line it would draw against gunowner registries.
A clearly divide court voted 3-2 to allowed the Pennsylvania State Police to maintain its database of gunowners in Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League v. Rendell. The judges who voted in the majority were Justices Ronald Castille, Ralph Cappy and Michael Eakin. Voting in the minority that the database was a registry of firearm ownership and thus prohibited under section 6111.4, were Justices Russell Nigro and Sandra Schultz Newman. Probably the most disappointing vote to ACLS was Eakin’s vote to support State Police recordkeeping. It was Eakin who pledged to gun owners in 2001 that he was on their side. Had Eakin stood up to his campaign pledges, ACLS contends, “Pennsylvania would be rid of this attack on our liberty and we would have had a victory.”
A Brady news release following the Pennsylvania court’s decision expressed joy that the Supreme Court rejected the ACLS appeal of a lower court ruling. The Brady Campaign was happy that, the Court rejected this challenge, declaring that “maintenance of a database of handgun sales is proper” under Pennsylvania law, as such a database tracks only handgun sales records, not ownership.”
The Brady camp release went on to state that; “The ruling allows Pennsylvania to keep records similar to federal records required to be destroyed by a recent law supported by Senator Specter and signed by President Bush. That law requires Brady Act background check records to be destroyed within 24 hours.”
Airport Rules Eased
People soon will be able to carry guns legally onto the grounds and parking lots of Reagan National and Dulles International airports, after officials on Oct. 6 eased what they said were overly restrictive rules, according to The Washington Post.
Without debate, the board of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority unanimously agreed to permit passengers and other airport visitors to carry guns, knives and other weapons as long as they keep them out of terminals and other buildings that access airfields. Passengers who are taking guns with them on flights still will be allowed to carry them into the terminal but are supposed to make arrangements with airlines in advance, officials said.
The action comes after pressure from an increasingly high-profile Virginia gun rights group—the Virginia Civil Defense League—whose members have taken to wearing firearms on their hips in public places to make their case, The Post said.
Before the Oct. 6 action, the airport authority barred anyone from carrying what it defined as dangerous weapons—including firearms, knives with blades longer than four inches, bows and arrows and even sandbags—from all airport property. That covered parking garages, access roads and several highways near Dulles, including parts of the Dulles Toll Road, Route 28 and the Dulles Greenway.
Motorists with arms in their cars could be arrested if they drove on those roads, even if they had no intention of going to the airport.
Airport officials said they made the changes, which will take effect Dec. 1, because the rules did not enhance security and because they unfairly affected unknowing gunowners.
“What we’re attempting to do is to more clearly define the areas of concern for us,” said James E. Bennett, president and chief executive of the airports authority, which manages operations at Dulles and National and whose members are appointed by the president, the District’s mayor and the governors of Virginia and Maryland. “At the same time, we want to make sure our regulation does not inadvertently entrap people.”
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