HoodaThunk?

(Whoopsie! Thanks to Dave D. for spotting my (ahem) little slip-up in the headline!)

From On High posts about this story sure to make any supporter of the 2nd Amendment angry:

Delaware State Police stopped Alvina Vansickle from purchasing a .22-caliber pistol for self-defense because she was too old and a woman, said Superintendent Col. Thomas MacLeish.

The outrage that followed led to the revelation that Delaware State Police had been keeping lists of gun buyers for years; state law requires them to destroy these records after 60 days.

Without so much as a traffic ticket, the 81-year-old Lewes resident should have sailed through the mandatory state police background check when she tried to buy a Taurus revolver from Charlie Steele’s Lewes gun shop last August.

Read the story and you find out that this woman wanted to buy the weapon for self-defense purposes. She and her husband are an elderly couple and he’s in a wheelchair having lost both legs to diabetes. Fascinating information, to be sure. And 100% immaterial to the question of whether her application to purchase a firearm should have been granted under state law.

Even the commander of the state police knows – and publicly admits – that neither gender nor age are matters to be examined in determining approval or denial of the purchase. Yet that’s what guided the numbskull cop who made the decision to put a stop to the sale. To make matters even worse, he admitted to having searched 7 years of gun purchase records to determine whether she’d ever bought a gun before. (Note that the fact that she hadn’t done so weighed against her in the decision.) It’s bad enough to have included that matter in the decision when such a determination isn’t referenced in the law on whether to grant approval. The fact that the police had at least 7 years of records to go through when they’re only supposed to have 60 days is just astonishing. I’ll take a brief moment to note that the presence or absence of a person on that list is also immaterial to whether the purchase should be permitted.

The NRA general counsel has requested 2 separate investigations into this situation, one to focus on the denial (and any other similar denials) and one to figure out who was responsible for not purging the records as required by the law.

This is just the most recent example of why most 2nd Amendment supporters I know are against allowing the government to keep records on who owns guns and who doesn’t. Aside from the fact that, historically, such lists have led to confiscation efforts, it’s now clear that such lists are prone to being used by police and government agencies to influence decisions where they should have no bearing. At the very least, there should be an independent audit of the Delaware State Police’s records and procedures. Every single officer involved in this sad event should be reprimanded and should undergo training to learn what the law is, since they clearly don’t know. If a determination is made that they knew the law and deliberately broke it, charges should follow and they should face the consequences under the law.

Moreover, this should be a warning to all Americans to be wary of allowing such records to be compiled and kept.