BIDS v. NICS

[Rock]

This is the first I've heard of this.


BIDS v. NICS

If we must have gun-buyer background checks to stop criminals,
at least do it without compiling massive records on the innocent.
A simple system called BIDS can do this,
and at far less cost than NICS.

Basically, BIDS distributes the list of hardcore prohibited possessors
to federally licensed firearm dealers. Dealers check their customers
against the computerized list to lockout illegal sales.
This maintains the privacy of innocent citizens and
eliminates the potential for illegal government registries.
It's simple. It's cheap. It works. Do it.

BIDS: “Blind Identification Database System”

by Alan Korwin, Author
Gun Laws of America

complete article here:

https://www.gunlaws.com/BIDSvNICS.htm

[togor]

Kind of the difference between magnetic strips and chips in debit cards.

But there will still be the "bad data" problem (incorrectly on or missing from list) and the need to blow out updates regularly and make sure dealers don't use a list from 2018 in 2023.

[JB White]

NICS already has flaws regarding misidentification and unreported felonies. Why would "BIDS" be any different? NICS is in place and percentage-wise is working successfully. NICS was also endorsed by the NRA and gun owners at the time.
Now they want a new system to get up and running which may require some record transfers and some not at all. What a fookin boondoggle that's going to be. How long will it take to establish a proven record even if it could? How much will it cost?

[togor]

The more I think about it, a distinction without difference in the world we live in. There's a database. Law enforcement has to have admin rights to it. It will be accessed over the web by gun dealers, because that's how things are done now in 2018 and beyond. Maybe when the idea was thought up in 2001, there was this vision of the government sending out CDs or something to dealers. Now if you shut down the NICS portal to the database, there will still need to be a portal--somebody will build one--and database transactions through that portal will be logged and available to law enforcement upon request.

I get that the writers dislike the idea that gun ownership estimates can theoretically be reconstructed from transaction data, but let's be honest, that ship has sailed. To simultaneously enjoy our wired life while making it hard(er) for terrorists to use it to do us harm, we let corporations accumulate a lot of meta-data on us, and we let the government see it.

Long story short, for people with the writer's sensibilities, the NICS system will do a better job of providing "privacy through inefficiency" than Google Guncheck, or some other private system that arises to service BIDS.