Denver, Colorado – A Denver resident was pulled over and was mistaken for a murder homicide suspect from Michigan, almost four decades ago back in 1975 in Commerce City. He sat in a county jail for 5 days and was later released and was never charged with any crime.

Decades later, James White, has forgotten about the incident, but his criminal background check records never forgot. For years, Mr. White has been denied by lenders, landlords, and employers, and rarely received any call backs, because they only saw one word in his background check report – Homicide.

He only discovered this mistake on his report when a landlord talked to him and explained why he couldn’t rent out an apartment to him. He was shocked to learn what was on his report and what people who have viewed his report had been seeing.

White has had very bad luck in looking for jobs in the past years and has also had trouble finding a place to rent. “I never murdered anybody” White said. He’s not sure how much of his misfortune can be traced back to that incident back in 1975.

Landlords, lenders and employers regularly run background checks on any applicants to check whether or not they pass their qualifications. They use background checking services which keep records of arrests, charges and convictions and can be searched by the public for a small fee.

When White learned of his record, he convinced authorities to add a disposition line noting that no formal charges were filed. Usually when a person wants a record to be removed from their background check report, they would need to request the court to seal the said records, but this would require the use of lawyers and will take a lot of time and money.

This situations shows the need for people to know what is on their background check reports, as mistakes and errors do occur. Sometimes through mistaken identity or identity theft, which is rampant in the United States. There’s a very real possibility that someone might have stolen your identity. This does happen, and they use your name and information, and if they’re arrested, it might show up on your record.

 

Attorney John Henry Browne, the lead civilian lawyer representing Robert Bales, the U.S. Army accused of killing 17 Afghan villagers, is objecting to a routine background check required by the military. These types of background checks are typical when classified evidence may be reviewed for a case, and in obtaining security clearances.

The Seattle based attorney had said, that he had no secrets to hide but is opposed to the security background check simply on principle and that there is really no need to be subjected to this intrusion in order to protect his client’s rights. Although Browne will likely still need that security clearance in order to see classified materials relating to the events where prosecutors say Robert Bales gunned down 17 Afghan civilians on the 11th of march.

Bales is in military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, awaiting mental evaluation to see if he is fit to stand trial for the massacre. The U.S. Army staff sergeant, 38, a father of two from Lake Tapps, Wash., is accused of walking off the base where he was deployed in southern Afghanistan with a 9 mm pistol and M-4 rifle outfitted with a grenade launcher. Officials say he walked to two local villages, where he killed four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, and then burned some of their bodies.

“This is an example of how much we have lost civil liberties, the prosecution gets to ‘clear’ the defense lawyer,” he wrote. “Most offensive are personal facts about mental health, alcohol and drug use, voluntary counseling and in and out patient treatment EVER,” he wrote. “For God’s sake I did live in and through the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s!!!!” Browne made his name by defending serial killer Ted Bundy and a number of high-profile homicide suspects.

 

 

 

Firearm purchases and federal background checks through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System continue to rise nationwide. Police agencies, shooting ranges, and firearm dealers report an increase in overall purchase and background checks due to increasing concern over rising crime rates as well as fear of President Obama’s tightening Gun laws.

Statistic show a rise in FBI NICs background checks, but a single background check may not indicate that an individual is purchasing a single firearm, and in some cases residents are purchasing whole arsenals. This number may not be an accurate indicator of how many gun purchases there are in total. In the previous year alone, 16.4 million gun background checks were conducted within the United States. For the first 3 months of this year, 4,855,085 background checks were conducted in the United States, and expected to reach about 19.4 million this year, the FBI said.

Aside from the increase in purchases, there has been an increase in awareness and frequent questions about gun transactions and transfers reported by officers. These inquiries are coming from people from different demographics, couples, individuals from all age groups, and different family members are now more aware and are trying to protect themselves by purchasing firearms because of fear driven by continued exposure to violence through different media sources. NRA spokesman Stephanie Samford said people are placing a higher premium on personal safety, especially with the economic downturn.

Nationally, guns and the right to bear arms has taken center stage recently due to different gun related crimes including the shooting death of an unarmed, black teen in Florida last month. Different gun advocates and organizations have also expressed their concern about the possible re-election of President Obama, worrying he will tighten gun laws, although he has said he wouldn’t take guns away from existing license holders.

 

 

 

CBS News – About 70,000 National Rifle Association members gathered at the group’s annual convention, where guns and gear were displayed on a seven acre center. The NRA opposes any restrictions on gun ownership as well as President Barack Obama’s re-election.

The NRA’s has placed it upon themselves to increase the portability of guns for its 4 million members. They have been lobbying Congress to pass a new law that would allow “concealed carry” permits to transport their guns into every state that allows qualified gun owners to carry concealed firearms.

The concealed carry reciprocity bill passed the House of Representatives last year. Senate sponsors are pushing for a vote in the coming weeks.

A 2002 study by the Violence Policy Center found in the first five years after Texas allowed concealed weapons, between 1996 and 2001, such permit holders were arrested for 5,314 crimes.

A 2007 investigation by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found more than 1,700 people with felony convictions, outstanding arrest warrants, and domestic violence injunctions were among those cleared for concealed weapon permits in Florida in the first half of 2006.

Outside the convention hall, there were voices challenging NRA views, including three survivors of last year’s mass shooting in Tucson that killed six people, including nine-year-old Christina Green, and wounded 13 others, including former U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords at her “Congress On Your Corner” event outside a supermarket.

Patricia Maisch, a Giffords constituent who grabbed a bullet-filled magazine from Loughner before he could reload his semi-automatic handgun, said the NRA stands in the way of closing key loopholes on background checks for gun buyers.

About 40 percent of U.S. gun sales, such as at gun shows or between private individuals, escape the checks required of licensed gun dealers, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Mayors Against Illegal Guns.

 

 

 

For those who need to get an FBI fingerprint background check, they may no longer have to wash ink from their fingers when they get fingerprinted as of this month. In Florida, one of the states now converting to an all digital in processing FBI fingerprint background checks, this is now a fact.

As of April this year, the state’s Department of Law Enforcement no longer accepts or provides the conventional ink and paper fingerprint cards. Now applicants have to process their background checks digitally via the use of an electronic fingerprinting device.

The FBI has trying to phase out hard copy fingerprinting for the past years, and have place the Florida State’s Department of Law Enforcement at the lead of its efforts in doing so. The FBI has stated that they hope to no longer accept or process paper fingerprints after April 15 of this year.

Submitting fingerprints is part of the process for completing a criminal background check. In most states, people are required to pass a background check as:

• Requirement to work with children, disabled or elderly adults
• Requirement to work at security companies
• Requirement to work at a correctional facility
• Requirement to work in the healthcare industry
• Requirement to work at a cemetery or funeral home
• Requirement to work as a mold inspector
• Requirement to work as a real estate agent
• Requirement to get a concealed weapons permit
• other legal requirements

 

 

 

Three major dating sites are now running criminal background checks for all their dating clients. These dating sites, namely eHarmony, Sparks Networks (JDate and ChristianMingle) and Match.com, hope to make online dating safer by implementing these background checks.

The online dating sites will also now actively scan potential clients for histories of sexual assault, identity theft and violence before enabling them to create accounts and access their website’s services.

The sites are also using and updating their online safety tool with “rapid abuse reporting systems”, added online dating safety, as well as relationship and offline dating safety information. This action came about due to the increase in online dating and online dating site use that followed an increase in scams, sexual offenses and even physical abuse. Last year a client at one of these sites filed rape charges against a repeat sex offender who was also a client of the website.

Background checks and history checks will screen against the national sex offender registries as well as remove fake accounts and profiles. In the last year alone over 40 million US citizens were actively using online dating sites and spent more than a billion on memberships. On average in the United States, 1 in 6 married couples met using online dating sites.

 

 

 

Travelers in different state airports can pass through shorter security lines by joining a federal program that places travelers who pass through an extensive background check under a “trusted traveler” list called Global Entry. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has just recently added the program.

The Phoenix Airport is one of 24 airports who are actively running the program. Anyone who has had the background checks are now able to go through the much shorter and faster security line, instead of going the through the longer lines where most U.S. travelers have to go through security screenings.

The federal-run Global Entry Program is overseen by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection under the Department of Homeland Security, which intends to create a single passenger processing system that would enable federal authorities to focus their security concerns on passengers who pose a threat, such as those who have failed federal background checks.

Some travelers have been dismayed by the program, due to its restriction and exclusivity to international travelers, stating that the program would also be quite beneficial to domestic travelers as well, most specially to the ones who frequently travel within the United States.

Application

Customs had limited the program to anyone 14 and older, and required anyone 14 to 17 years old to have written consent from a parent or guardian on the application. But it has expanded the program to include all ages.

The application is online at www.globalentry.gov. An applicant also has to pay, through the secure online website, a non-refundable $100 fee with the application form.

Customs will review the application and schedule an interview where agents collect and scan fingerprints and an identification card such as a driver’s license or passport, verify any other travel documents, take a photo of the applicant and collect other biometric information – characteristics of the person’s appearance.

Authorities then check the applicant’s information against criminal and government antiterrorism databases with the FBI and other agencies. Customs sends the applicant an e-mail once its agents have decided to approve or reject the application.

Even after a traveler is approved for Global Entry, customs officials said they run periodic checks to ensure nothing has changed in the traveler’s background that would force them to suspend or remove the traveler from the program.

Global Entry is meant for international travelers, including U.S. residents and citizens who frequently fly abroad.

 

 

 

Compared to February 2011, figures for this year has shown an increase of 31% with 1,266,344 FBI background checks in the NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) comparisons. Actual figures from the unajusted February 2012 NICS figures at 1,734,646 shows a 18.6% increase from the unadjusted NICS figures or just 1,463,138 in February 2011.

Comparisons and figures show this as the 21st stratight month of contant increase in background checks when compared to the same period in the previous year. The adjusted NICS data were derived by subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks used by several states such as Kentucky, Iowa and Michigan for CCW permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases.

Though not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provide a more accurate picture of current market conditions. In addition to other purposes, NICS is used to check transactions of firearms sales and transfers on new and used handguns and long guns.

For additional information or to view a complete set of the current monthly reports, please visit the NICS website.

Source – AmmoLand.com

 

 

WASHINGTON – U.S. Federal Gun Laws have done a great job at preventing and denying gun purchases to those who are not eligible, under the Brady Bill and other laws, namely those who are:

Fall into any of the mentioned situations and you will fail the background check required to purchase a firearm, but unfortunately being on the FBI’s terrorist watch list does not fail you from the background check.

A military veteran organization is lobbying to fix this oversight by reviving a long overdue bill – Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act. Under this law the FBI can now deny gun purchases to people in the watch list, closing what the group calls the “terror gap.”

“This is common-sense legislation that does not infringe on a gun-owner’s rights, and will protect our troops and our nation,” said Vet Voice Foundation in a press release. The group, founded by veteran and progressive activist Jon Soltz, recently formed a new working group to rally veterans and ramp up pressure on Congress to prohibit gun sales to people on the terrorist list.

The motivation behind the move is the continued threat to men and women in uniform, who have been targeted by shooting attacks over the past few years. In addition to shootings at Fort Hood in Texas in 2009, that same year a military recruiting station in Little Rock, Ark., was fired upon. Terrorist suspects also attempted to purchase weapons to attack Fort Dix, N.J., in 2007.

A 2011 report by the Government Accounting Office found that from February 2004 to February 2010, “individuals on the terrorist watch list were involved in firearm or explosives background checks 1,228 times; 1,119 (about 91%) of these transactions were allowed to proceed because no prohibiting information was found.”

Gun lobbyists, however, disagree. The National Rifle Association is adamantly opposed to the law. The group posted a fact sheet online in April 2011 saying that the bill was “aimed primarily at law-abiding American gun owners.” The NRA said that such gun owners could be in jeopardy of jail time if they were mistakenly or arbitrarily placed on the watch list. “Ninety-five percent of watch listed persons are already prohibited from acquiring firearms in the U.S., because they are not U.S. citizens or legal resident aliens,” they wrote.

 

 

Under Departmental Order (DO) 556-73. An individual may obtain a copy of his/her FBI criminal identification record, upon request, for review and correction purposes, to challenge the information on record, or satisfy certain legal requirements such as a requirement for adopting a child; requirement to live, work, or travel in a foreign country; and/or other court-related matters.


FBI-approved Channelers receive the fingerprint submission and relevant data, collect the associated fee(s), electronically forward the fingerprint submission with the necessary information to the FBI CJIS Division for a national criminal history record check, and receive the electronic record check result for dissemination to the individual. An FBI-approved Channeler simply helps expedite the criminal history record information on behalf of the FBI.


The process for making a request through an FBI-approved Channeler is consistent with FBI submission procedures. Please note that an FBI-approved Channeler may have different methods or processes for submissions. Furthermore, additional fees may apply above the FBI fee for requests submitted through an FBI-approved Channeler. Contact each Channeler for processing times.


Federal Bureau of Identification Notification: If your response requires an apostille, you will need to contact the FBI directly in order to obtain your background check. FBI requirements prohibit any channeler to process fingerprints that require an apostille. This service is available for US Citizens and US Permanent Residents only.


Individuals can now request a copy of their own FBI criminal history record for the following reasons:

• To review or to request a correction or update
• Challenge information on their record
• Satisfy certain legal requirements such as a requirement for adopting a child
• As a requirement to live in a foreign country
• As a requirement to work in a foreign country
• As a requirement to travel in a foreign country
• Other court related matters

Procedure: Choose a valid FBI Approved Channeler


National Credit Reporting
www.myFBIreport.com
(800) 441-1661
-DOWNLOAD FORM 1-
-DOWNLOAD FORM 2-
Fill up and Submit Application Form
FEE – $ 39.95 (per person/per copy)


National Background Check, Inc.
www.fastfingerprints.com
(877) 932-2435
-DOWNLOAD FORM-
Fill up and Submit Application Form
FEE – $45 (per person/per copy)


Accurate Biometrics
www.accuratebiometrics.com
(773) 685-5699
-DOWNLOAD FORM-
Fill up and Submit Application Form
FEE: $50.00 – Standard Service (per person/per copy)


Here is a list of other FBI Approved Channelers for corporate applications or schedule a fingerprint appointment.

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/background-checks/list-of-fbi-approved-channelers


All forms and requests must be submitted with two sets of your fingerprints

• Print a standard fingerprint form (FD258) from the following link – Download and Print Fingerprint Form. Or obtain a FD258 fingerprint card.
• Provide 2 original fingerprint forms or cards (FD258) (Xerox copies are not acceptable)
• Your name and date of birth and signature must be provided on the fingerprint card. Fingerprints should be placed on the FD 258 fingerprint card, commonly used for applicant or law enforcement purposes.
• Individuals may NOT fingerprint themselves; fingerprints MUST be obtained from a law enforcement agency or through Accurate Biometrics, pursuant to the DO Requirements.
• Include rolled impressions of all 10 fingerprints and impressions of all 10 fingerprints taken simultaneously (these are sometimes referred to as plain or flat impressions).

 

Virginia – The West Virginia Senate passed a Bill that would exempt current and valid permit to carry holders from going through the FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Senate Bill 353 won unanimously by a 34 to 0 vote in favor of the Bill.

The Senate Bill, introduced by state Senate Majority Leader John Unger and Senate President Jeff Kessler, will now go to the House of Delegates for consideration. The Processing of firearm purchases would be greatly expedited for persons with a valid carry permit since they have already cleared a background check.

Mere moments from the passing of Senate Bill 353, Delegate Pogge’s House Bill 375 (HB 375) was also passed, receiving a vote of 23 to 17 in favor of the bill. This Bill allows government employees to store and carry firearms in their privately owned vehicles during work hours. Changes made during the senate hearing is up for consideration after which the bill will then head to the Governor’s Desk.

 

 

 

HARRISBURG, Pa. – A recently renewed Pennsylvania law is now being challenged by school employees who has had some past run-ins with the law, and specially those who has had a criminal records. The new law states that any current school and educational facility employees must submit any arrests or convictions of serious crimes in their past and any future arrest or pending convictions within three days.

Some of the affected employees are now fighting to keep their current employments in light of the recent law. Currently, there are at least four lawsuits filed challenging the State Department of Education’s new rules for school employees. The State Department of Education has directed school administrators to terminate employees coming in contact with children who have been convicted of any of the 28 listed offenses including kidnapping, homicide, and sexual assault among others. This applies to teachers, administrators, school staff as well as contractors.

Lawsuits filed in Allegheny, Dauphin, Delaware and York counties take issue with the department’s interpretation that anyone convicted of the listed offenses should be barred from employment in a public or private school. The school employees argue that the wording of the law suggests that it applies only to future employees.

The employees also argue that even if the courts decide that the law applies to current employees, it is unconstitutional, violating the due process rights of employees through its retroactive application and penalizing them for crimes for which they were already punished.

 

 

 

Passed and written by Rep. Joseph M. McNamara (D-Dist. 19, Warwick, Cranston) and passed today, House bill (2012-H7077)will make national and state criminal background check a requirement for anybody participating or applying to join in any mentoring program that involves working with students and kids.

State law already requires background checks for individuals seeking employment with a private school or public school department, “and this legislation simply expands the scope of that law to include others who will have direct and regular contact with young people, in school settings or other mentoring situations,” said Representative McNamara, Chairman of the House Committee on Health, Education and Welfare.

“As programs such as these grow in school settings, adding this language to law is the safe and responsible thing to do” Rep. Joseph M. McNamara said.

The bill was introduced at the recommendation of the Rhode Island Mentoring Program, a non-profit organization that provides training and support for mentoring agencies in the state. The group operates the Feinstein Mentor Training Institute and one-on-one school-based mentoring programs in Warwick, Woonsocket and on Aquidneck Island.

Status
View latest bill text (Draft #1) [PDF]
February 15 2012 – House read and passed

Summary

An Act Relating To Education – School Committees And Superintendents (individuals Seeking To Participate In Any Mentoring Prog. Whereby The Individual Would Be Working With Student(s) In A Mentoring Situation Would Be Required To Undergo A Criminal Background Check Similar To Other Employees In A Public Or Private School.)

 

 

 

Like many states, Maine depends on the FBI to conduct background checks of people who want to acquire firearms from the state’s federally licensed gun dealers.

And like many states, Maine is a slacker in supplying the records that the FBI depends on to run those checks.

That’s how Raymond Geisel got his guns, including a Glock Model 17 pistol and a semi-automatic version of the AK-47 assault rifle. Geisel had previously been committed to a psychiatric hospital in Bangor, which made him ineligible under federal law to buy or possess a gun. But because state officials had not supplied records of his commitment to the FBI, Geisel passed background checks without being flagged.

Eventually, the law caught up with Geisel. He was arrested in Miami in August 2008 for making threats against Barack Obama, who was campaigning in south Florida around the same time. Another gun that Geisel had acquired in Maine was subsequently recovered by federal agents in his hotel room, along with a combat-style hatchet, armor-piercing ammo and canisters of tear gas.

The data gap that Geisel exploited should have been closed by now. Four years ago, after the massacre at Virginia Tech exposed gaps in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), Congress and the Bush administration took decisive action to shore up the joint state-federal operation, which is supposed to keep guns away from the deranged and the dangerous.

Original Source – iWatch News

 

 

 

Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and at least 17 others were shot on January 8, 2011, Saturday morning when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket where Ms. Giffords was meeting with constituents.

Ms. Giffords, 40, whom the authorities called the target of the attack, was in critical condition Sunday morning at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons on Saturday.

Six of the victims died, among them John M. Roll, the chief judge for the United States District Court for Arizona, and a 9-year-old girl, the Pima County sheriff, Clarence W. Dupnik, said.

The suspect in Saturday’s deadly rampage purchased a firearm legally after passing an FBI background check. Jared Lee Loughner, a 22-year-old man with a troubled past who law enforcement say may have been influenced by American Renaissance, a pro-white publication, bought the gun from Sportsman’s Warehouse’s Tucson store in November.

Mr. Loughner had exhibited increasingly strange behavior in recent months, including ominous Internet postings – at least one showing a gun – and a series of videos in which he made disjointed statements on topics like the gold standard and mind control.

Pima Community College said he had been suspended for conduct violations and withdrew in October after five instances of classroom or library disruptions that involved the campus police.

Loughner, accused of killing six people, shooting Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and wounding 13 others, did not present a concealed weapons permit so he was required to pass an FBI background check. He did so “immediately and without incident,” said Matt French, speaking from the Sportsman’s Warehouse’s Utah headquarters.

“To my knowledge, the firearm purchase was without incident,” French said.
French could not confirm whether the gun purchased in November was the same gun allegedly used in Saturday’s mass shooting, for which Loughner so far has been charged with five counts of murder and attempted murder. However, he said it was the only recent firearm purchase made by the suspect at their stores.

President Obama, speaking at the White House, confirmed that a suspect was in custody and said that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Robert S. Mueller III, was on his way to Arizona to oversee the investigation.

Original Source – Fox News

 

 

 

Osama Bin Laden is dead, President Obama announced Sunday night, in a televised address to the nation. His death was the result of a U.S. operation launched today in Abbottabad, Pakistan, against a compound where bin Laden was believed to be hiding, according to U.S. intelligence. After a firefight, a small team of American forces killed bin Laden and took possession of his body, the president said.

“Tonight I can report to the American people and the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden,” Obama said during brief remarks at the White House.

“Justice has been done,” he said, in comments that marked a formal end of the manhunt for the most visible and emotionally-charged symbol of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The president said U.S. intelligence operatives received a tip in August on bin Laden’s whereabouts, which ultimately led to Sunday’s attack. Obama said he determined last week that the U.S. had enough reliable information to take action; by Sunday morning, he had authorized “a small team of Americans” to conduct an operation targeting bin Laden.

“After a fire fight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body,” the president said. “No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties.”

Obama said the 9/11 attacks that bin Laden and his lieutenants orchestrated nearly 10 years ago remain “the worst attack on the American people in our history” and said the images of the crumbling Twin Towers “are seared into our national memory.”

The president emphasized that Americans “did not choose this fight” against al Qaeda, but rather, “it came to our shores.” He praised U.S. military and intelligence professionals for working “tirelessly to achieve this outcome.” To the families of 9/11 victims, he noted that the U.S. has “never forgotten your loss.”

“Tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11,” Obama said. “I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people.”

Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had targeted bin Laden during their presidencies, and both had failed to either capture him or kill him. The failure to snare bin Laden weighed most heavily, perhaps, on the Bush Administration, which occupied the White House during the 9/11 attacks, and the al Qaeda leader’s killing falls exactly eight years to the day when Bush famously declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq.

Bush said in a statement that Obama called him Sunday night to inform him of “the momentous achievement” of bin Laden’s death.

“I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude,” Bush said. “The fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done.”

Original Source – Huffington Post

 

 

 

PHOENIX (Reuters) – Arizona’s Republican Governor Jan Brewer on Monday vetoed two controversial bills, one mandating proof of U.S. citizenship to run for president, the other allowing guns on college campuses, in a clear setback for conservatives who control the state legislature.

Brewer, who grabbed headlines a year ago when she signed a get-tough state law cracking down on illegal immigrants, vetoed the bills in an announcement late on Monday.

The so-called “birther bill,” would have made Arizona the first state in the nation to require presidential candidates prove U.S. citizenship by providing a long form birth certificate, and other forms of proof including baptismal or circumcision certificates, to be placed on the state ballot.

“I never imagined being presented with a bill that could require candidates for president of the greatest and most powerful nation on earth to submit their ‘early baptism or circumcision certificates’ … This is a bridge too far,” she said..

A former Arizona secretary of state, Brewer said she did not support designating one person as “gatekeeper to the ballot for a candidate,” as it “could lead to arbitrary or politically motivated decisions.”

The Republican-controlled state legislature passed the measure at a time when some foes of President Barack Obama, a Democrat question whether he is a native-born U.S. citizen. Real estate mogul and television reality show host Donald Trump is among those questioning Obama’s birth in Hawaii.

Brewer also vetoed a bill that would have made Arizona the second state in the nation to allow an individual to carry a firearm — either concealed or not — in the public rights of way on higher education campuses, because it was “so poorly written.”

Brewer said shortcomings in the bill included a failure to define “public rights of way” and the inclusion of state schools, where firearms are prohibited by federal and state laws.

Neighboring Utah allows firearms inside campus buildings.

Original Source – Reuters/Yahoo News

 

 

 

The Second Amendment and court precedent guarantee an individual’s right to bear arms, but improved and expanded background checks are needed to prevent gun violence like the shocking attack in Tucson in January, President Obama wrote in an op-ed Sunday.

Writing in the Arizona Daily Star more than two months after the shooting of Rep.Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, six of whom died, Obama said he’s “willing to bet” that responsible gun owners would support laws to “keep an irresponsible, law-breaking few — dangerous criminals and fugitives, for example — from getting their hands on” guns.

“Most gun owners know that the word ‘commonsense’ isn’t a code word for ‘confiscation,” he wrote.

“I’m willing to bet they don’t think that using a gun and using common sense are incompatible ideas — that we should check someone’s criminal record before he can check out at a gun seller; that an unbalanced man shouldn’t be able to buy a gun so easily; that there’s room for us to have reasonable laws that uphold liberty, ensure citizen safety and are fully compatible with a robust Second Amendment,” the president wrote.

Obama wrote in Sunday’s op-ed that his administration has not curbed gun rights but, in fact, has expanded them, by letting people carry guns in national parks and wildlife refuges.

But, he said, with more than 27,000 deaths from guns each year — a number down from its height of more than 39,000 in 1993, more needs to be done to prevent assailants like Tucson suspect Jared Loughner from getting a hold of weapons.

“A man our Army rejected as unfit for service; a man one of our colleges deemed too unstable for studies; a man apparently bent on violence, was able to walk into a store and buy a gun,” he lamented.

The president went on that “almost all gun owners in America are highly responsible … and that’s something that gun-safety advocates need to accept.”

“Likewise,” he added, “advocates for gun owners should accept the awful reality that gun violence affects Americans everywhere, whether on the streets of Chicago or at a supermarket in Tucson.

Obama suggested three areas for reform: enforcement of gun control laws already on the books through better implementation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System; rewards for states that keep the best data — “and therefore do the most to protect our citizens”; and a faster and nimbler network that provides “an instant, accurate, comprehensive and consistent system for background checks to sellers who want to do the right thing.”

And while the president acknowledged that some gun owners will never support his call, he argued that weak background checks are bad for police officers, law-abiding citizens and gun sellers.

“If we’re serious about keeping guns away from someone who’s made up his mind to kill, then we can’t allow a situation where a responsible seller denies him a weapon at one store, but he effortlessly buys the same gun someplace else,” he wrote, in reference to the “gun show loophole” that gun control advocates say enables people to avoid background checks.

Original Source – Fox News

 

 

 

NEWTOWN, Conn –(Ammoland.com)- The January 2011 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 784,856 is an increase of 9.7 percent over the NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 715,309 in January 2010.

For comparison, the unadjusted January 2011 NICS figure of 1,312,544 is an increase of 18 percent over the unadjusted NICS figure of 1,112,312 in January 2010.

The adjusted NICS data was derived by NSSF by subtracting out NICS purpose code permit checks used by several states such as Kentucky and Utah for CCW permit application checks as well as checks on active CCW permit databases.

While not a direct correlation to firearms sales, the NSSF-adjusted NICS data provides a more accurate picture of current market conditions. Questions concerning NSSF-adjusted NICS data should be directed to NSSF research at 203-426-1320.

In addition to other purposes, NICS is used to check transactions of firearms sales and transfers on new and used handguns and long guns. Click here for additional information on NICS or to view a complete set of the current monthly NICS reports. NSSF members may access historical monthly NICS reports in the members log-in section of nssf.org.

Original Source – AmmoLand.com