Governing is all about priorities. (Hah! You thought I was going to say it's about "compromise," but I am not John Kasich so you're all out of luck.) Currently, the Department of Justice's most obvious priorities are a) making sure Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III keeps his job, and b) finding new and innovative ways to remove brown people and their children from the United States. One thing it's not doing, as The Washington Post explains, is giving much of a damn as to whether crazy people and serial murderers are buying guns.

Reviews by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in fiscal 2017 led to 112,000 gun-purchase denials because people were in forbidden categories, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) investigated 12,700 of those cases. How many of the investigated cases resulted in prosecutions? Twelve. That’s 0.09 percent of the cases ATF investigated.

And while JeffBo did issue a Sternly Worded Memo last March to all hands to take lying on the background checks seriously, the memo apparently blew off a number of desks because nothing much changed.

After suing the department to get records related to background checks, the Brady Campaign found the laws are repeatedly and openly flouted. “In those documents, we've seen time and time again dealers going ahead and transferring guns when someone answered a question on background check form ‘I am a felon,’ ‘I am subject to a restraining order,’ ‘I was dishonorably discharged from the military,’” Avery Gardiner, co-president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Gardiner, said in a phone interview. “So, people who are not allowed to buy guns are actually answering the form honestly and still get a gun.”

Those kids from Guatemala who come here fleeing violence and end up in camps really blew it. They should have crossed the border disguised as AKs. You never would've been able to get them out of the country.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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