22 ms·

Do we still trust that these types of rules are being followed (particularly in the context of mass surveillance)? If I recall correctly, the public has been to

by knz 10y ago

Do we still trust that these types of rules are being followed (particularly in the context of mass surveillance)? If I recall correctly, the public has been told on many occasions that the NSA/FBI/local police were not doing something only to be told years later that this was not the case. Laws such as this just highlight how asinine gun policy can be. Allowing a paper trail but not allowing digital records doesn't really benefit gun owners (Completing a 4473 would be a lot easier if they could verify that you are already a responsible gun owner) or make policing gun laws any safer (straw purchases would be easier to track if the records were digitized).

ekianjo 10y ago
> Allowing a paper trail but not allowing digital records doesn't really benefit gun owners I'd say anything making the job of the police a little more tedious is worth bonus points. There is so much asymmetry of power against citizens that such measures restore a little bit of balance. You can't have both Freedom and a super effective police force on the other hand. It's always a trade-off.
- komali2 10y ago
  Are you an American? Because plenty of countries strike that balance just fine.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    Care to share examples of said countries ?
  - snerbles 10y ago
    What other cultures consider just fine, many Americans would consider unacceptably collectivist.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      > What other cultures consider just fine, many Americans would consider unacceptably collectivist. It's odd to focus on that one conflict of 'cultures', of the almost infinite possibilities. As one tiny example, some things other cultures do would also seem unacceptably individualistic and lawless.
      - LyndsySimon 10y ago
        > As one tiny example, some things other cultures do would also seem unacceptably individualistic and lawless. Do you have any examples of this by chance?
        hackuser 10y ago
        Somalia ... many, many other countries around the world where violence and corruption are far more commonplace.
    - pc86 10y ago
      And this isn't even a Republican/Democrat or conservative/liberal thing. I know plenty of what Republicans would call "big government liberals" who would agree that many cultures (largely western European in this case) are too far in that direction.
  - jethro_tell 10y ago
    yeah, when your police are walking around with a stick and a helmet, the balance of power is pretty stable. Americans don't have this option.
    - RonanTheGrey 10y ago
      That seems a fairly shortsighted estimation of what balances power between police and the people. And FWIW the UK is arming more of its police, since that is clearly the country you are referring to.
      - jethro_tell 10y ago
        >since that is clearly the country you are referring to no not really, there are a lot of countries without armed or heavily armed police forces. >That seems a fairly shortsighted estimation of what balances power between police and the people. So does the NRA's idea that the second amendment will allow people to overthrow the government if they still own guns. But at the end of the day, forcing your police force to think deescalation first has some real benefits. Carrying a fatal weapon and being trained that people within 25-30 feet are in your 'danger zone' has had a very poor outcome.
        hga 10y ago
        Carrying a fatal weapon and being trained that people within 25-30 feet are in your 'danger zone' has had a very poor outcome. But the "within 25-30 feet" at least has it being the truth in its favor. And none of this has changed, US cops have always been well armed, right? The problem I see is the switch from their being "peace officers" to warrior cops, or at the very minimum, having as their #1 objective making it home safely when their shift ends. Rather negates the "Thin Blue Line" concept of their being there to protect us, also calls into question their outsized benefit packages.
        jethro_tell 10y ago
        >US cops have always been well armed, right Not really, they carried a revolver or .38 special, might have had a shotgun between the front seats or in the trunk, Using khaki as the only body armor. Now there are police whose primary weapon is an ar-15 and the backup is a semi-auto .40 mm glock. everyone else has an ar-15 in the trunk and a glock in hand plus varying levels of body armor. That's a far cry from having a 6 shot revolver on your hip just in case.
  - spdustin 10y ago
    I'm an American, and I have no problem with responsible gun ownership, nor do I have a problem with electronic records of gun purchasers. I assume FOID cards are in a database already. If I was a law enforcement officer responding to a domestic violence call of a husband battering his wife, I'd want to know if the oldest male in the house purchased an AR-15 derivative and several handguns. EDIT: Many adults also explicitly show their possession of a lethal weapon every day: their car, which is registered in a statewide database. EDIT2: I'd further like to be able to query that database as a civilian, so I know which of my neighbors may own an unusual cache of guns, so that I can have better situational awareness if I'm ever in a dispute with one. EDIT3: To apply a standard of transparency to this data collection, the person whose data about firearm purchases should be able to be notified by some immediate or otherwise automated means that their record was viewed by a LEO or a citizen or another state/federal agency.
    - syshum 10y ago
      >>EDIT2: I am sure violent criminals would love such a database as well, this way when they need an illegal gun they know which homes to rob. No, you have no right to know what I own, be that Gun, Drones, or TV's. You have no right to compel me to publicly list my assets in a database you can search.
      - spdustin 10y ago
        Another good point. Though there are plenty of public records listing your truly high value assets, it should be noted.
        syshum 10y ago
        And I disagree with all of them. Unlike what you claim to be, I actually am a strong advocate for privacy. The fact that the government has already violated my privacy in many ways, is not a defense or justification for more intrusion upon my privacy. A privacy advocate should never use the justification you have
    - wyager 10y ago
- drusepth 10y ago
  It always blows my mind to see people suggest that making the job of people sworn to protect them more difficult is not only acceptable, but preferred.
  - syshum 10y ago
    It always blows my mind to see people suggest the police exist to provide protection. The government and the court system is very clear that the police are NOT a protection unit, any protection provided is merely a by product of their primary mission, Law Enforcement. Law Enforcement has nothing to do with protection, but rather order and control. Protection can be a side effect of order and control but it is not the primary goal, or reason for the existence of Police.
  - vkou 10y ago
    Those people may have sworn an oath to protect us, but in practice, like any security apparatus, they care more about protecting the state from us.
  - miend 10y ago
    The US Constitution must blow your mind, then, because that's largely what it does.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > It always blows my mind to see people suggest that making the job of people sworn to protect them more difficult is not only acceptable, but preferred. The police aren't sworn to protect the public. They are sworn (like all public employees) to protect the Constitution, which is a very different thing, and even there accountability to that oath is pretty weak (and most of the things that people complain about making their life harder just provide some small measure of accountability for them doing what they are, in fact, sworn to do.)
    - syshum 10y ago
      >> They are sworn (like all public employees) to protect the Constitution Sorry no. Federal Law Enforcement, Military, and Elected officials maybe. Probably some other Federal Employees But there is no requirement, nor do many local police dept, require any oath at all, and I can not think of any off the top of my head that have a oath to the Constitution in their ceremony.
gohrt 10y ago
> or make policing gun laws any safer That's the point, and why it benefits gun owners -- the law is intended to prevent policing of gun laws.
- h4nkoslo 10y ago
  It would be more accurate to say that it is intended to prevent harassment of gun owners.
nkw 10y ago
We had an incident in my home state, where despite legal prohibitions to the contrary, a state law enforcement worker provided the government with the entire database of the identities of all those licensed by the state to carry concealed weapons. The legal process used to accomplish this was essentially "calling up and asking for it". Sources: http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/highway-patrol-gave-feds-missouri-weapon-permits-data/article_266b644e-a235-11e2-a8e7-0019bb30f31a.html http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/highway-patrol-gave-feds... and http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-highway-patrol-gave-federal-government-list-of-ccw-permit/article_ac670792-d777-5354-9d73-6c87144d526e.html http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missour...
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Licensing is different -- that's a persistent relationship.
  - hga 10y ago
    I'm not sure what you mean, especially since these licenses do expire if not renewed, whereas a 4473 records an event that doesn't stop being true. However, it's still the case that the legislature sure thought it had made such an information transfer illegal (but it's Republican and the Governor and AG are Democrats, not the first time the AG has refused to do anything about state executive wrongdoing). And the legislature made that even more clear by completely changing the way the physical license is issued, its now through each county's sheriff, with the only renaming common database being MULES (http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/chapters/chapText043.html http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/chapters/chapText043.html): "MULES", Missouri uniform law enforcement system, a statewide-computerized communications system provided by the patrol designed to provide services, information, and capabilities to the law enforcement and criminal justice community in the state of Missouri; Which as I understand has much stricter and long standing protections against the obvious potentials for abuse. And knz's point stands, nope, we don't trust the Feds on this.
    - Spooky23 10y ago
nkw 10y ago
> Allowing a paper trail but not allowing digital records doesn't really benefit gun owners (Completing a 4473 would be a lot easier if they could verify that you are already a responsible gun owner) I believe most of the gun rights people are of the opinion that digital records would enable a large database of the location and type of guns and the identity of their owners. A database which they believe can be used as a tool in the event government policy shifts towards confiscation of certain firearms rather than forward looking sale or manufacturing prohibitions.
- komali2 10y ago
  Or be hacked and then distributed.
  - knz 10y ago
    The vectors for a loss of information are already out there - it wouldn't even have to be the big online gun shops. A list of ammunition/gun accessories/hunting supplies etc is probably sufficient to make a good guess for whether someone owns a firearm. Obviously there is a possibility for a database loss if they tracked all gun sales, but considering the stat that 30% of households have a firearm and the many other possible associated data sets the risk seems minimal.
    - hga 10y ago
      The very latest survey, released by Pew on August 26th, ups that to 44% of all households, see http://www.people-press.org/2016/08/26/opinions-on-gun-policy-and-the-2016-campaign/ http://www.people-press.org/2016/08/26/opinions-on-gun-polic... for the executive summary and up in the right hand corner the full release with that number http://www.people-press.org/files/2016/08/08-26-16-Gun-policy-release.pdf http://www.people-press.org/files/2016/08/08-26-16-Gun-polic... Survey size was a bit over 2,000, so if they got a good sample, which is getting harder and harder, it ought to be a solid number (most national political surveys are half that size, 1,000 is considered to be a minimum for any degree of accuracy). That percentage goes up and down depending on people's willingness to admit that to a nosy surveyer; RKBA activists attribute this recent increase to the huge numbers of first time owners who haven't yet decided on a policy of discretion. Me, I wonder how many of us longer term owners have adopted a FU attitude in the presidential campaign with the starkest choice ever presented to us, excepting perhaps G. H. W. Bush vs. Dukakis, but Bush the father was much closer to total prohibitionist Dukakis, and in fact we're still living with his import bans.... You are of course right that a list of suspected gun owners could be generated in a whole bunch of ways, although I note that when it comes to online ammo dealers I've never seen a group of vendors who are faster in discarding their records of past sales.
abysmallyideal 10y ago
They simply out-source it to a corporation that would be willing to do what it takes to collect the information, or as much as possible. It's not uncommon for the three letter agencies to delegate the illegal ramifications to a "corporate" entity, freelancers, mercenaries, etc... The FBI hires gangsters and criminals to "gather information" or "assist in investigations" when they need something done that is highly questionable. It's a really grey area, and a very large market. Snowden for example succeeded in pinning "illegal surveillance" on the NSA, when the work was contracted out to the American corporate security-cartels, although he is a very rare exception, especially considering he is alive and not jailed.
- chrisbennet 10y ago
  Don't they get around some of this "you can't spy on your own countrymen" thing by just swapping data with the British surveillance service i.e. "I'll spy on yours and you spy on mine and we'll swap afterwards"?
  - Natanael_L 10y ago
    Five eyes program
- gumby 10y ago
  Both this and chrisbennet's reply sound like paranoid fantasies but sadly, are 100% correct.
pc86 10y ago
> Do we still trust that these types of rules are being followed (particularly in the context of mass surveillance)? No we (I) do not. In my state, it is a violation of state law to have a record of gun owners. When the state police force started saving records of every purchase, they were sued, but won on the basis that since they were only storing records of the purchase of new firearms, and not those few types of firearms exempt from a transfer background check, that it wasn't a record of all gun owners and was therefore legal. In practice, though, unless you are buying a used rifle or shotgun from another person, the state police knows what firearms you own in direct contradiction of state law. There is no doubt in my mind that agencies like the FBI or NSA would go far beyond this in order to determine what firearms Americans owned if it served their purposes to do so.
- merpnderp 10y ago
  Wasn't the DC sniper case solved by a tip and not by the widespread abuse and hard press interrogations of law abiding people tracked down through these gun sale records?
  - hga 10y ago
    It definitely wasn't solved by the well publicized abuses of Maryland law enforcement, using their records to "check out" owners of the sort of rifle used. Seeing as the two snipers were from out of state and had bought the rifle Washington State. And even then, with millions of them in civilian hands, they've been sold to us since the '60s, we're talking needle in a haystack. In general, the search for the perpetrators totally screwed up, right down to when the police finally got the correct car and license plate, they refused to release this to the public, it got out by other means and that directly led to their capture. Disclaimer?: I was living in Arlington, Virginia at the time. The FBI woman shot while at a Home Depot? That was my Home Depot.
    - caseysoftware 10y ago
      That was my Home Depot too. I was volunteering with a local high school (Wakefield) and had been there a couple days before getting supplies. It was all kinds of f*d up when I realized which one they were talking about. (I lived near Shirlington before it got trendy and expensive.)

by knz 10y ago

ekianjo 10y ago

> Allowing a paper trail but not allowing digital records doesn't really benefit gun owners I'd say anything making the job of the police a little more tedious is worth bonus points. There is so much asymmetry of power against citizens that such measures restore a little bit of balance. You can't have both Freedom and a super effective police force on the other hand. It's always a trade-off.

komali2 10y ago
Are you an American? Because plenty of countries strike that balance just fine.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  Care to share examples of said countries ?
- snerbles 10y ago
  What other cultures consider just fine, many Americans would consider unacceptably collectivist.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    > What other cultures consider just fine, many Americans would consider unacceptably collectivist. It's odd to focus on that one conflict of 'cultures', of the almost infinite possibilities. As one tiny example, some things other cultures do would also seem unacceptably individualistic and lawless.
    - LyndsySimon 10y ago
      > As one tiny example, some things other cultures do would also seem unacceptably individualistic and lawless. Do you have any examples of this by chance?
      - hackuser 10y ago
        Somalia ... many, many other countries around the world where violence and corruption are far more commonplace.
  - pc86 10y ago
    And this isn't even a Republican/Democrat or conservative/liberal thing. I know plenty of what Republicans would call "big government liberals" who would agree that many cultures (largely western European in this case) are too far in that direction.
- jethro_tell 10y ago
  yeah, when your police are walking around with a stick and a helmet, the balance of power is pretty stable. Americans don't have this option.
  - RonanTheGrey 10y ago
    That seems a fairly shortsighted estimation of what balances power between police and the people. And FWIW the UK is arming more of its police, since that is clearly the country you are referring to.
    - jethro_tell 10y ago
      >since that is clearly the country you are referring to no not really, there are a lot of countries without armed or heavily armed police forces. >That seems a fairly shortsighted estimation of what balances power between police and the people. So does the NRA's idea that the second amendment will allow people to overthrow the government if they still own guns. But at the end of the day, forcing your police force to think deescalation first has some real benefits. Carrying a fatal weapon and being trained that people within 25-30 feet are in your 'danger zone' has had a very poor outcome.
      - hga 10y ago
        Carrying a fatal weapon and being trained that people within 25-30 feet are in your 'danger zone' has had a very poor outcome. But the "within 25-30 feet" at least has it being the truth in its favor. And none of this has changed, US cops have always been well armed, right? The problem I see is the switch from their being "peace officers" to warrior cops, or at the very minimum, having as their #1 objective making it home safely when their shift ends. Rather negates the "Thin Blue Line" concept of their being there to protect us, also calls into question their outsized benefit packages.
        jethro_tell 10y ago
        >US cops have always been well armed, right Not really, they carried a revolver or .38 special, might have had a shotgun between the front seats or in the trunk, Using khaki as the only body armor. Now there are police whose primary weapon is an ar-15 and the backup is a semi-auto .40 mm glock. everyone else has an ar-15 in the trunk and a glock in hand plus varying levels of body armor. That's a far cry from having a 6 shot revolver on your hip just in case.
- spdustin 10y ago
  I'm an American, and I have no problem with responsible gun ownership, nor do I have a problem with electronic records of gun purchasers. I assume FOID cards are in a database already. If I was a law enforcement officer responding to a domestic violence call of a husband battering his wife, I'd want to know if the oldest male in the house purchased an AR-15 derivative and several handguns. EDIT: Many adults also explicitly show their possession of a lethal weapon every day: their car, which is registered in a statewide database. EDIT2: I'd further like to be able to query that database as a civilian, so I know which of my neighbors may own an unusual cache of guns, so that I can have better situational awareness if I'm ever in a dispute with one. EDIT3: To apply a standard of transparency to this data collection, the person whose data about firearm purchases should be able to be notified by some immediate or otherwise automated means that their record was viewed by a LEO or a citizen or another state/federal agency.
  - syshum 10y ago
    >>EDIT2: I am sure violent criminals would love such a database as well, this way when they need an illegal gun they know which homes to rob. No, you have no right to know what I own, be that Gun, Drones, or TV's. You have no right to compel me to publicly list my assets in a database you can search.
    - spdustin 10y ago
      Another good point. Though there are plenty of public records listing your truly high value assets, it should be noted.
      - syshum 10y ago
        And I disagree with all of them. Unlike what you claim to be, I actually am a strong advocate for privacy. The fact that the government has already violated my privacy in many ways, is not a defense or justification for more intrusion upon my privacy. A privacy advocate should never use the justification you have
  - wyager 10y ago
drusepth 10y ago
It always blows my mind to see people suggest that making the job of people sworn to protect them more difficult is not only acceptable, but preferred.
- syshum 10y ago
  It always blows my mind to see people suggest the police exist to provide protection. The government and the court system is very clear that the police are NOT a protection unit, any protection provided is merely a by product of their primary mission, Law Enforcement. Law Enforcement has nothing to do with protection, but rather order and control. Protection can be a side effect of order and control but it is not the primary goal, or reason for the existence of Police.
- vkou 10y ago
  Those people may have sworn an oath to protect us, but in practice, like any security apparatus, they care more about protecting the state from us.
- miend 10y ago
  The US Constitution must blow your mind, then, because that's largely what it does.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > It always blows my mind to see people suggest that making the job of people sworn to protect them more difficult is not only acceptable, but preferred. The police aren't sworn to protect the public. They are sworn (like all public employees) to protect the Constitution, which is a very different thing, and even there accountability to that oath is pretty weak (and most of the things that people complain about making their life harder just provide some small measure of accountability for them doing what they are, in fact, sworn to do.)
  - syshum 10y ago
    >> They are sworn (like all public employees) to protect the Constitution Sorry no. Federal Law Enforcement, Military, and Elected officials maybe. Probably some other Federal Employees But there is no requirement, nor do many local police dept, require any oath at all, and I can not think of any off the top of my head that have a oath to the Constitution in their ceremony.

gohrt 10y ago

> or make policing gun laws any safer That's the point, and why it benefits gun owners -- the law is intended to prevent policing of gun laws.

h4nkoslo 10y ago
It would be more accurate to say that it is intended to prevent harassment of gun owners.

nkw 10y ago

We had an incident in my home state, where despite legal prohibitions to the contrary, a state law enforcement worker provided the government with the entire database of the identities of all those licensed by the state to carry concealed weapons. The legal process used to accomplish this was essentially "calling up and asking for it". Sources: http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/highway-patrol-gave-feds-missouri-weapon-permits-data/article_266b644e-a235-11e2-a8e7-0019bb30f31a.html http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/highway-patrol-gave-feds... and http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-highway-patrol-gave-federal-government-list-of-ccw-permit/article_ac670792-d777-5354-9d73-6c87144d526e.html http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missour...

Spooky23 10y ago
Licensing is different -- that's a persistent relationship.
- hga 10y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean, especially since these licenses do expire if not renewed, whereas a 4473 records an event that doesn't stop being true. However, it's still the case that the legislature sure thought it had made such an information transfer illegal (but it's Republican and the Governor and AG are Democrats, not the first time the AG has refused to do anything about state executive wrongdoing). And the legislature made that even more clear by completely changing the way the physical license is issued, its now through each county's sheriff, with the only renaming common database being MULES (http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/chapters/chapText043.html http://www.moga.mo.gov/mostatutes/chapters/chapText043.html): "MULES", Missouri uniform law enforcement system, a statewide-computerized communications system provided by the patrol designed to provide services, information, and capabilities to the law enforcement and criminal justice community in the state of Missouri; Which as I understand has much stricter and long standing protections against the obvious potentials for abuse. And knz's point stands, nope, we don't trust the Feds on this.
  - Spooky23 10y ago

nkw 10y ago

> Allowing a paper trail but not allowing digital records doesn't really benefit gun owners (Completing a 4473 would be a lot easier if they could verify that you are already a responsible gun owner) I believe most of the gun rights people are of the opinion that digital records would enable a large database of the location and type of guns and the identity of their owners. A database which they believe can be used as a tool in the event government policy shifts towards confiscation of certain firearms rather than forward looking sale or manufacturing prohibitions.

komali2 10y ago
Or be hacked and then distributed.
- knz 10y ago
  The vectors for a loss of information are already out there - it wouldn't even have to be the big online gun shops. A list of ammunition/gun accessories/hunting supplies etc is probably sufficient to make a good guess for whether someone owns a firearm. Obviously there is a possibility for a database loss if they tracked all gun sales, but considering the stat that 30% of households have a firearm and the many other possible associated data sets the risk seems minimal.
  - hga 10y ago
    The very latest survey, released by Pew on August 26th, ups that to 44% of all households, see http://www.people-press.org/2016/08/26/opinions-on-gun-policy-and-the-2016-campaign/ http://www.people-press.org/2016/08/26/opinions-on-gun-polic... for the executive summary and up in the right hand corner the full release with that number http://www.people-press.org/files/2016/08/08-26-16-Gun-policy-release.pdf http://www.people-press.org/files/2016/08/08-26-16-Gun-polic... Survey size was a bit over 2,000, so if they got a good sample, which is getting harder and harder, it ought to be a solid number (most national political surveys are half that size, 1,000 is considered to be a minimum for any degree of accuracy). That percentage goes up and down depending on people's willingness to admit that to a nosy surveyer; RKBA activists attribute this recent increase to the huge numbers of first time owners who haven't yet decided on a policy of discretion. Me, I wonder how many of us longer term owners have adopted a FU attitude in the presidential campaign with the starkest choice ever presented to us, excepting perhaps G. H. W. Bush vs. Dukakis, but Bush the father was much closer to total prohibitionist Dukakis, and in fact we're still living with his import bans.... You are of course right that a list of suspected gun owners could be generated in a whole bunch of ways, although I note that when it comes to online ammo dealers I've never seen a group of vendors who are faster in discarding their records of past sales.

abysmallyideal 10y ago

They simply out-source it to a corporation that would be willing to do what it takes to collect the information, or as much as possible. It's not uncommon for the three letter agencies to delegate the illegal ramifications to a "corporate" entity, freelancers, mercenaries, etc... The FBI hires gangsters and criminals to "gather information" or "assist in investigations" when they need something done that is highly questionable. It's a really grey area, and a very large market. Snowden for example succeeded in pinning "illegal surveillance" on the NSA, when the work was contracted out to the American corporate security-cartels, although he is a very rare exception, especially considering he is alive and not jailed.

chrisbennet 10y ago
Don't they get around some of this "you can't spy on your own countrymen" thing by just swapping data with the British surveillance service i.e. "I'll spy on yours and you spy on mine and we'll swap afterwards"?
- Natanael_L 10y ago
  Five eyes program
gumby 10y ago
Both this and chrisbennet's reply sound like paranoid fantasies but sadly, are 100% correct.

pc86 10y ago

> Do we still trust that these types of rules are being followed (particularly in the context of mass surveillance)? No we (I) do not. In my state, it is a violation of state law to have a record of gun owners. When the state police force started saving records of every purchase, they were sued, but won on the basis that since they were only storing records of the purchase of new firearms, and not those few types of firearms exempt from a transfer background check, that it wasn't a record of all gun owners and was therefore legal. In practice, though, unless you are buying a used rifle or shotgun from another person, the state police knows what firearms you own in direct contradiction of state law. There is no doubt in my mind that agencies like the FBI or NSA would go far beyond this in order to determine what firearms Americans owned if it served their purposes to do so.

merpnderp 10y ago
Wasn't the DC sniper case solved by a tip and not by the widespread abuse and hard press interrogations of law abiding people tracked down through these gun sale records?
- hga 10y ago
  It definitely wasn't solved by the well publicized abuses of Maryland law enforcement, using their records to "check out" owners of the sort of rifle used. Seeing as the two snipers were from out of state and had bought the rifle Washington State. And even then, with millions of them in civilian hands, they've been sold to us since the '60s, we're talking needle in a haystack. In general, the search for the perpetrators totally screwed up, right down to when the police finally got the correct car and license plate, they refused to release this to the public, it got out by other means and that directly led to their capture. Disclaimer?: I was living in Arlington, Virginia at the time. The FBI woman shot while at a Home Depot? That was my Home Depot.
  - caseysoftware 10y ago
    That was my Home Depot too. I was volunteering with a local high school (Wakefield) and had been there a couple days before getting supplies. It was all kinds of f*d up when I realized which one they were talking about. (I lived near Shirlington before it got trendy and expensive.)