Background Checks Don’t Prevent Future Events

Here in Austin there’s this big brouhaha about whether Uber/Lyft should be made to get fingerprints for background checks on their drivers. If it was just fingerprints, at convenient locations and times that would be one thing. However, it’s never quite that easy when a bureaucratic entity like a city is involved.

Now that this thing in Michigan happened, and the shooter happened to be an Uber driver who was actually picking up rides as he was on his spree, people are making a stink about the fingerprint back ground checks and whatever. Seriously people, think about it.

A background check, checks whether you have done something in the past. A background check, does not predict or prevent you from doing evil things in the future.

No one has bothered to mention that the guy passed a background check to get a gun, but apparently Uber is supposed to be held to higher standard somehow. Maybe it’s that background checks are not required on gun purchases, cuz ‘Murca. That’s something for another day though. Back to Uber’s background checks.

According to the Washington Post:

Ultimately, investigators may decide that there was no reliable way to predict that Dalton would, during a single shift on the job, morph from his identity as a driver into his role as a mass killer. Police say Dalton didn’t have a criminal history.

How about that?

Nothing in the guy’s background would or could have predicted that one day he was going to snap and start killing people.

Instead of questioning Uber for their background checks, maybe we should be asking how the guy was able to get his grubby hands on a gun in the first place? Where’s that outrage? Are we all out of rage juice for mass shootings given how many we have or am I missing something else?