1/ A quick note on BGCs & saving lives. It's hard to know how many lives they save because we're reasoning about a counterfactual, i.e. "how many extra people would be dead if this weren't in place." So as a proxy for that gun controllers offer # of people prevented from buying.
2/ The big problem with offering this number is it's FULL of false positives. Gun controllers love the high number of false positives b/c it inflates the one number they have as a good proxy for "lives saved," i.e. # of people who failed a BGC.
3/ But a big percentage of those people who fail a BGC are eventually cleared to purchase, & they come back & get a gun. So the false positive rate is very high, & also regressive b/c having a common hispanic name will cause you to fail. But this explains something peculiar tho.
4/ What outsiders to this debate find odd is that the NRA is the one pushing to "Fix NICS," and the gun controllers are the ones who do not want to fix it! So outsiders see this and think, "fix NICS must be code for abolishing i t, right?" But it isn't. The NRA wants it fixed!
5/ And the NRA wants it fixed because if it were fixed, & the false positive rate were closer to zero, it would look far less effective. The number of BGC failures would fall off a cliff, & rationale for having a BGC system in the first place (i.e. it stops millions) would 💣
6/ They'd point to a fixed BGC system & go, "hey, it doesn't stop many ppl/yr from getting guns, especially when put up against the # of crime-related gun homicides, & also it's regressive & racist and we know you hate stuff that is regressive & racist... so let's scrap it!"
7/ Addendum: there is a lot of controversy over how high the false positive rate is. See here: washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-che…
8/ I think two things about this controversy: the NRA wants to lower the false positive rate, & the (mostly) Dems do not. So whatever the truth of the matter, both sides have the impression that fixing the false positive rate would have a real impact on the numbers.
