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Baby Brady sounds like something less
cumbersome than the federal check. To many gun shop owners/FFL's, this
often seems like a no-brainer: under Baby Brady they make a local call to the
local Bureau of Investigation or state police rather than a federal agency (the FBI),
and they talked to "local boys." The FBI calls this a state "point of
contact" system.
However, it's not just a state background
check. Using a state agency puts gun owners in double jeopardy.
They are not only run through the federal NICS check, but they also go through a
much more extensive and often less accurate state level check.
Some less-than-ardent gun rights supporters
will argue that the FBI and local background check officials do not keep the
names, but that view is naive, at best. If you are concerned that
government knows too much about its citizens, especially in the area of
firearms, you must conclude that two levels of government obtaining information
about who purchased a firearm and what firearm they purchased is more troublesome than one level.
When establishing a Baby Brady law, the
residents of that state are being subjected to two background checks, and
therefore two chances -- we believe it a certainty, but for the sake of argument
we will call it a chance -- of registration. Baby Brady's are an expansion
of gun control, albeit to a local level.
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