NY Gun Buyers Should Have Social Media Screened, Pols Say
What if one does not have a social media presence?"You would have thought this person was a model citizen until you examined his social media profile," said Adams, a Democrat. "And you would have noticed he was not a model citizen, he was a broken citizen that was a time bomb that was waiting to explode."
The pair of bills would empower the New York State Police and local departments like the NYPD to check three years of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat activity for anyone applying for a gun license in New York, Parker said.
Authorities would flag anything that is an "immediate threat to public safety," he said. Gun buyers would also have to let police comb through a year's worth of their search engine histories under the legislation.
And of course this does not take into account anyone can establish a social media account in someone else's name. Ad buying on FB can be similarly abused. I don't see the NYSP, the NYPD, or any other municipal PD in the state spending any time determining whether an account is fake.