Re:Watched: Police are stockpiling databases with personal i...
by merpnderp on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @01:35PM
(#12490484)
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?
Re:Watched: Police are stockpiling databases with personal i...
by hga on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @01:52PM
(#12490643)
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.
Re:Watched: Police are stockpiling databases with personal i...
by caseysoftware on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @08:55PM
(#12493511)
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.)
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.