Carl Douglass wrote a fictional account of a man who, with best intentions, became a legally sanctioned assassin for the United States and made a significant contribution to the efforts of the president and the CIA to achieve peace. His compensation for so doing was to be abandoned by his organization, his president, and his country. He became public enemy number one and a fugitive who eluded a world-wide dragnet. At one critical point In the Sheep Dog and The Wolf-A Story of Terrorism and Response, and the Sheep Dogs Who Protect, the fugitive Hunter Caulfield desperately needed to obtain guns that were not traceable to him. He made his way to a flea market in Memphis, Tennessee where he was able to buy three guns without a background check, a permit, or there being a record made. In this fictional account, “Each of the weapons had been used in at least one murder; one was used in three separate murders. The three guns were first seized by the Memphis area sheriff’s office, then were sold by the Sheriff’s Department to a reputable gun dealer who sold them to a lawful concealed weapon holder who sold them to a friend of a friend at a flea market–all for a profit–and finally; they came into the possession of Emer Hadclif from Berryville, Arkansas, who was either drunk or did not care. Many states destroy such guns, but Tennessee and Kentucky–among a few others–sell or trade the guns for such things as Kevlar vests thanks to the lucrative efforts of the NRA. They can be resold legally in those states and are all but untraceable thereafter.”
That bit of fiction made for a good story, but it could not have happened in the real world, right? No, that is not right. The segments on guns in Sheep Dog are the product of careful research and are all too true. In five states 2.5 million warrants for fugitives were not reported to the FBI. In Washington state alone, 13,000 people accused of felonies were not recorded by the FBI. In Michigan, only seven percent of warrants were shared with the FBI which resulted 
in the missing of 900,000 fugitives. Kevin Collins, the Michigan Fugitive Database supervisor, is quoted in USA Today, Gun Checks Miss Millions of Fugitives [April 4, 2014] is quoted as saying, “When I bought my first gun, I could have had a felony warrant for murder, and they wouldn’t have known.” When Hunter Caulfield, the fictional protagonist in Sheep Dog was able to buy his guns, he was not an imaginative extreme, he would fit in well with the experience in any flea market in the country with guns for sale.
Mr. Collins points out that literally millions of fugitives can pass undetected through federal background checks. The checks are built into gun law to prevent felony fugitives, felons, the mentally ill, people with records for domestic abuse, and many others who should not be carrying guns, from being able to obtain them. The NRA advocates for almost unfettered rights to own guns of almost any kind and lobbies successfully about the enactment or enforcement of laws governing gun sales in flea markets. The NRA has successfully stymied efforts to prevent the mentally ill from having guns—a national bill that specifically prohibits anyone with a history of hospitalization for mental illness in the past three months. If the law were to function as it is written, no one with an record of having an outstanding arrest warrant for either a major or a minor crime, would be able to purchase a weapon legally. The laws are on the books. However, the U.S. government’s National Instant Background System is rife with gaps. Several tens of thousands of individuals with outstanding warrants for violent felonies go undetected and could buy a gun at a reputable gun store with minimal effort—agree to a background check–and at a flea market even more easily and walk away with a deadly and unrecorded weapon. Again, it is not fiction that such fugitives are responsible for a significant amount of the violent crime committed in the United States each year.
In thirty states and the District of Columbia, gun buyers are checked only against the federal database, and the records of a woefully few criminals are contained in that data base. Georgia and California each have over 600 warrants out per 100,000 residents. That enormous number of criminals constitutes a pool of potential gun owners available to keep violent crime a major social ill of our society. Police and courts are not required to share information with the FBI! Citizens should mount an appeal to states, to the federal government, and to the immensely powerful and influential NRA to bring a halt to this travesty.