Ashcroft Move May Have Little Effect

Page 2A
FBI, ATF haven't been using info from background checks in probes Ashcroft move may have little effect
By Toni Locy
USA TODAY


WASHINGTON -- To gun-rights groups, Attorney General John Ashcroft's decision to have the FBI purge records of background checks on lawful gun buyers after only a day is a major victory in the fight to preserve the rights of law-abiding citizens to bear arms.

To gun-control groups, it's a crippling blow to the ability of the nation's system of checking the backgrounds on prospective gun buyers to catch criminals and crooked firearms dealers.

Both views overstate the significance of the information at the heart of the controversy, say law enforcement sources familiar with the system's operations. Neither the FBI nor the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has been doing much with the records, mainly because of strings attached to the system by the politics of gun control.

''The information wasn't being used either for good purposes or for ill,'' says Jim Pasco, a former ATF official who is now executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police.

''Both sides of the issue have their own reasons -- mostly political -- for drawing a line in the sand over it,'' Pasco says.

As a result, Ashcroft's proposal will have no measurable impact on the way the checks system has been operating for more than two years, the sources say.

When he announced his plan in June, Ashcroft said he was ''protecting the privacy'' of law-abiding gun dealers and buyers by requiring the FBI to erase records of approved firearms transactions within 24 hours of purchase.

At issue is the system's capability to create an ''audit log,'' a listing of all of the checks by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System over a 90-day period.

According to an FBI report on the system in March 2000, the audits have uncovered a handful of instances of misuse, such as a licensed gun dealer who was selling firearms without doing the checks. It said audits also helped identify several possible ''straw purchases,'' when the person buying a gun bought it for someone who had failed the background check.

Theoretically, the audit log could help investigators uncover patterns of misuse. But the FBI and ATF have not used it as an investigative tool -- unless a pattern of misuse is too obvious to ignore, say the sources, who requested anonymity. FBI employees randomly audit the records and refer irregularities to the ATF, which has jurisdiction over gun dealers.

The fact that the FBI could have used the audit log was a deterrent to unscrupulous gun dealers, making them think twice about misusing the system, the sources say.

James Jay Baker, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, says Ashcroft's proposal is not merely a symbolic gesture. He says it eliminates ''a precursor to confiscation'' that could allow the information to be compiled into a list of gun owners.

''Just because they aren't using the information that way doesn't mean they couldn't,'' he says.

Nancy Hwa, a spokeswoman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, says gun-control advocates didn't know that the FBI and ATF had not been using the records to conduct investigations.

''It's kind of shocking that our premier law enforcement agencies have been cowed by the gun lobby to this extent,'' she says.

The system's purpose is to keep licensed dealers from selling guns to convicted felons, fugitives, people who are under felony indictments or subject to restraining orders, mental incompetents and those who have been dishonorably discharged from the military.

It is a spinoff of the landmark Brady Law of 1994, named for James Brady, the press secretary wounded in an assassination attempt on President Reagan in 1981. The act established a waiting period aimed at giving would-be buyers a ''cooling-off period,'' and it gave the FBI 5 years to create a system that could provide instant background investigations.

The audit log is a small component of the system that has been accepted by gun dealers and buyers because it works fairly well. The FBI handled 9.3 million background checks from November 1998 through December 2000. It completed 71% of those in just a few minutes.