A much better alternative to NICS

Once again, I'm going to post about something that I learned about on David Codrea's War on Guns. Mr. Codrea has, yet again, posted something I consider too important not to spread as far and wide as possible.

What's being discussed here is the Blind Identification Database System (or Bids), developed by Brian Puckett and Russ Howard. This system would provide a way for licensed gun dealers to check whether or not a prospective purchaser was prohibited from buying firearms. Currently, of course, we have the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (or NICS), designed to do the same thing. The difference is that BIDS, being a "blind" check, would provide much greater privacy protection for the buyer. The NICS system provides the government with all the information it would need to form a de facto gun registration, and with only a small change to the political landscape, could be used by the government to compile a centralized database of every gun purchase from licensed dealers in the country.

The basis of how the system would work is that the government would compile a database of people prohibited from buying firearms--this is the information that would be stored--that way, the government would never need to see information about who is trying to buy firearms. This list would be distributed (in electronic format) to every licensed gun dealer. Then, when making a sale, the dealer would simply check the prospective buyer's identifying information against the list.

Such a system would provide at least as much protection against firearms being sold to people prohibited from buying them as is provided by NICS, but would not be easily used to compile a database of gun purchases. That, obviously, would be an enormous improvement.