After he tangled with police and was committed to a mental health facility in Oregon in 2010, John F. Shick should not have been able to buy a gun in America under federal law.

But an Albuquerque, N.M., man told investigators he sold two 9 millimeter handguns with no background check to a man resembling Shick when Shick responded to a newspaper ad in April 2011, Pittsburgh police Cmdr. Thomas Stangrecki said on Friday.

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Private sales without background checks are legal under New Mexico law. Shick tried to buy a handgun in Oregon in January 2011 and was denied after a background check.

Pittsburgh police believe Shick used the handguns to fatally shoot therapist Michael Schaab, 25, of Regent Square and wound five others at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic on March 8.

“This situation is an example of a person who clearly had dangerous tendencies — he already had been flagged by law enforcement — but he was still able to gain access to firearms because our laws are such a patchwork,” said Max Nacheman, director of CeaseFirePA, a gun violence prevention group. “There are very few barriers to a person who is determined to get a firearm.”

Unlike Pennsylvania, which requires background checks in private handgun sales, neither Oregon nor New Mexico requires an individual selling a gun to another person to run a background check or keep records of the sale.

“Obviously, an upstanding person should make sure the gun is not falling in the wrong hands,” said Lt. Robert McDonald of the New Mexico state police.

Investigators are trying to learn more about the gun purchase in New Mexico and to learn if Shick “… was living there, if he was traveling through or visiting, or went specifically to purchase a firearm,” Stangrecki said.

Background checks should be conducted in gun sales, and private sellers should be able to do them instead of having to go to federally licensed gun dealers, which are authorized to conduct the checks, said Kim Stolfer, chairman of Firearms Owners Against Crime.

“I think it’s an inadequate effort to make them (private sellers) go to a gun dealer when the average individual should be able to do it as well,” Stolfer said.

Shick was committed in Oregon in January 2010 after his arrest for fighting with police at Portland International Airport. His mother told investigators in Pittsburgh that he was diagnosed with late-onset schizophrenia and that she thought he had stopped taking his medication.

According to federal law, anyone committed to a mental institution is barred from owning a gun. But not every state submits commitment information to the national database that gun dealers and police use for background checks.

“There are certain people prohibited from owning firearms, but there is no way to enforce that law if you’re not going to conduct a background check and if that background check system isn’t populated with all the applicable data,” Nacheman said.

Oregon began submitting its commitment records to the national data pool in December. Pennsylvania does not submit the information nationally; state police have said legal issues are holding up the process. Stolfer said he believes Pennsylvania should submit those records.

“It may be the first time in my life I ever agreed with the anti-gun groups,” Stolfer said. “Above and beyond any other entity, gun owners don’t want bad guys to get guns.”

LexisNexis cannot dismiss claims that its background-check service violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act, a federal judge ruled.
LexisNexis Risk & Information Analytics Group offers a service called Esteem that informs employers when job applicants have a history of theft or fraud.

http://liarcatchers.com/background_checks.html 

Subscribing employers pay LexisNexis a fee in return for its background checks on current and potential employees. Members must also inform LexisNexis when their employees and customers are implicated in new theft incidents.
Subscribers can submit incident reports only if they referred the incident for criminal prosecution, or if the employee admits guilt.
If the employee admits guilt, that individual must make an “admission statement,” consisting of a signed statement describing the incident and admitting guilt. When a subscriber requests information on a current employee or prospect, LexisNexis searches its system for the employee’s personal information.
Once LexisNexis verifies a match, it assigns an “adjudication score.” If the employee falls below a certain standard, the employee gets a “noncompetitive score.”
Clients never receive a subject’s admission statement, but LexisNexis does send them a report and the adjudication score.
The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives employees the right to review such reports before their employer can take adverse action.
As an additional service, LexisNexis sends these letters, known as “pre-adverse action letters,” on employers’ letterhead to employees or prospective employees who match their records.
The pre-adverse action letters LexisNexis sends out contain a copy of the report, but do not include a copy of the admission statement.
LexisNexis’ pre-adverse action letters also include a disclaimer that the company “did not participate in any employment decision and will be unable to provide any specific reasons as to why the [employer] may choose to take an adverse employment action.”
Several days later these employees receive a final “adverse action letter” on the employer letterhead from LexisNexis. (ruling page 3)
Keesha Goode worked customer service in a Forman Mills store from November 2006 to October 2008.
After she was accused of theft, Forman Mills fired her and gave LexisNexis an incident report, including an admission statement.
When Goode applied for a job at a Family Dollar Stores location in May 2009, she received a pre-adverse action letter from LexisNexis telling her she matched information in its Esteem database relating to the Forman Mills incident report.
The letter was on Family Dollar Stores’ letterhead, but told Goode to contact LexisNexis if she wished to contest the accuracy of information it provided.
Goode later sent LexisNexis a letter requesting her entire file, and disputing the alleged theft from Forman Mills. In the letter she stated: “I was accused of not reporting on a former employee who was stealing merchandise, but I did not steal anything myself.”
LexisNexis responded by defending the accuracy of its background check on her. It ignored her subsequent request for copies of the information on which LexisNexis relied.
Victoria Goodman cashiered for a Dollar General Store from June 2005 to June 2006 until her boss told her she was being investigated for theft, and asked her to go home.
Goodman signed an admission statement at Dollar General’s request, but the company never told her about the outcome of its investigation, and her application for unemployment benefits was approved.
Goodman later started working as a cashier for a Rite Aid drug store and applied for a promotion in November 2009.
Rite Aid in turn submitted Goodman’s information to the LexisNexis and fired upon receiving the Esteem report.
LexisNexis sent Goodman a pre-adverse action letter on Rite Aid’s letterhead with the report attached.
After Goodman received the final adverse action letter on Rite Aid letterhead five days later, she disputed the report in writing to LexisNexis. As it did in Goode’s case, the company defended the accuracy of its background report. It ignored a request for Goodman’s admission statement that a legal services company sent on her behalf.
Goodman won reinstatement at Rite Aid after filing a union grievance.
In a federal class action, Goode and Goodman said LexisNexis violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act by taking adverse action against them before providing them with a copy of their consumer reports.
They say LexisNexis takes an adverse action when it verifies an Esteem match and adjudicates them as noncompetitive, before sending pre-adverse action letters.
LexisNexis disputed this characterization in a motion to dismiss. It also argued that the employer is solely responsible for relaying the consumer report before taking adverse action.
As an agent for the employer, LexisNexis said it could not be held liable under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
Another section of the FCRA requires consumer-reporting agency to clearly and accurately disclose all the information in a consumer’s file upon request.
Goodman and Goode claim LexisNexis’ refusal to turn over the admission statements in their files violated this provision.
LexisNexis argued that its interpretation of the law led it to believe it was required to turn over only the actual report, and nothing else.
U.S. District Judge Jan DuBois refused to dismiss both counts Friday, finding that the class has adequately defined their adjudication as noncompetitive, before receipt of the required notice, as an adverse action.
Since that action was not willful, however, DuBois said LexisNexis cannot be liable for punitive damages.
DuBois said the allegation pertaining to the admission statements is willful, however, which would entitle the class to punitive damages.
“If the admission statement is not ‘information on the consumer,’ the court cannot fathom what might be,” DuBois wrote.