Minnesota Electronic Gaps Let Abusers Buy Guns, Women's Advocates Say
............
MARTIGA LOHN
Associated Press
ST. PAUL (AP) -- Cracks in Minnesota's electronic records could allow domestic abusers who aren't supposed to buy guns to get them without raising alarm, advocates for battered women and handgun controls said Tuesday.
The state's CriMNet electronic network of court and crime information systems had complete records for less than a third of misdemeanor domestic assault convictions that occurred from May 2002 to April 2003, a study by the Battered Women's Justice Project and Citizens for a Safer Minnesota Education Fund found.
Courts recorded 3,189 domestic assault convictions in that period, but only 949 cases with records and fingerprints made it to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which oversees CriMNet. Another 137 cases without fingerprints were forwarded but couldn't be entered into the network.
The advocates said they couldn't prove that convicted domestic abusers whose records weren't on CriMNet actually bought guns. But the information gaps would let those offenders purchase guns without their convictions appearing on background checks. The gaps also might lead to shorter sentences for repeat offenders whose previous convictions don't show up.
"The gun laws are one of the best tools we have to protect victims of domestic violence,'' said Ellen Ade of the St. Paul Domestic Violence Intervention Program. "Let us allow the laws to work the way they were intended.''
Domestic violence - which accounts for a quarter of all violent crime in Minnesota - is more likely to lead to death when guns are available, the report said.
Federal law prohibits anyone convicted of a domestic assault misdemeanor from buying or owning a gun. State law bans gun ownership by domestic abusers for at least three years and raises penalties for repeat domestic assaults.
The Minnesota Supreme Court's information technology division will start transferring records of domestic assault misdemeanors to the BCA at the beginning of January. The division doesn't have the resources to transfer records from 1996 to 2002 stored in outdated computer systems, said Karen Buskey, systems services manager.
The advocates want state funding to improve electronic records of domestic violence convictions and stepped-up efforts from local police and sheriffs to fingerprint offenders convicted of domestic-abuse related crimes. Fingerprints should be required to get a permit to carry a gun, they said.
CriMNet, created in 2001, has had mixed results so far, despite receiving about $180 million in state funding, according to a legislative auditor's report on the network earlier this year.
