acknowledges

Illinois State Police acknowledges it wrongly issued a gun license to Aurora shooter

Illinois State Police acknowledged Monday that the agency wrongly issued a gun license to the shooter in the Aurora warehouse murders, but in a detailed statement the agency also suggested that the Aurora Police Department may have failed to do its part to ensure the man no longer owned a weapon.

According to state records, Gary Martin applied for a firearm owner’s identification card on Jan. 17, 2014. He provided his name and birth date for a background check, and falsely answered “no” when asked if he had ever been convicted of a felony.

A records search only returned Martin’s criminal history in Illinois, a series of minor infractions that did not disqualify him from owning a gun. The screening process failed to detect a mid-1990s felony conviction for aggravated assault in Mississippi for which he served five years in prison and was released in 1997.

Martin received his gun license on Jan. 31, 2014. Less than five weeks later, he purchased a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson from an Aurora gun dealer. The purchase was approved March 6, 2014, after Martin’s name and birth date cleared a second background check.

Martin used that gun Friday to fatally shoot five co-workers and wound several police officers at the Henry Pratt Co. He later died in a shootout with law enforcement.

Aurora Police Department

Gary Martin

Gary Martin (Aurora Police Department)

State police said the agency is reviewing Illinois, Mississippi and federal records to determine how the felony conviction evaded two criminal background checks.

Aurora police Chief Kristen Ziman said a criminal background check would not necessarily detect a 20-year-old conviction. But Martin’s aggravated assault is easily found in public record databases used by the Chicago Tribune and news organizations across the country.

The Illinois State Police realized Martin never should have received his gun license within weeks of the Smith & Wesson’s purchase, according to a timeline the agency provided Monday. Martin applied for a concealed carry license on March 16, 2014, and submitted his fingerprints to expedite the application process. Those prints produced an FBI record that ultimately led state police to Martin’s felony conviction in Mississippi.

In a statement released Monday, the Illinois State Police said it revoked Martin’s license on April 17, 2014, and sent a letter notifying him that he could no longer possess a gun. The Aurora Police Department also should have been informed of Martin’s revocation through a statewide police database in accordance with agency policy, the statement said.

Upon receipt of the letter, Martin was given 48 hours to transfer the handgun to someone with a valid firearm license or his local law enforcement agency, state police said Monday. He also was required to submit paperwork — referred to as a firearm disposition record — to the Aurora Police Department proving he no longer possessed the gun.

Aurora police, in turn, were required to mail the completed form to the Illinois State Police. The state agency has no record of Aurora ever sending the required documentation.

“The ISP has no record of receiving a Firearm Disposition Record for Martin or Martin’s FOID card at this time, however a review of paper and electronic files continues,” the state agency said in a statement.

If a revoked FOID card holder fails to comply with the revocation requirements, the county sheriff or the local law enforcement agency may petition the court to issue a search warrant for any firearms in the holder’s possession. However, Illinois law does not require them to do so.

There is no record of law enforcement asking the court for permission to search for Martin’s gun.

Aurora police officials — who have said they will release further updates about the shooting primarily through social media — did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Ziman, who became the department’s chief in 2016, previously said she did not know if Aurora police or another agency checked on whether Martin gave up his gun. It was also unclear if Aurora had any record of the receiving the revocation notice.

“We’re looking into that,” Ziman said Saturday at a news conference.

The state police issued 10,818 FOID revocations last year. It is currently conducting a review to determine how many of the firearm disposition records have been returned.

“In most instances, the Firearm Disposition Record does not get returned,” the ISP statement said.

Kane County Sheriff Ron Hain recently told the Aurora Beacon-News his office is weeks away from launching a database to check on firearm owner’s ID compliance. The database would monitor only unincorporated areas of Kane County that the sheriff’s office oversees.

sstclair@chicagotribune

Twitter @stacystclair

Tribune coverage: Aurora mass shooting »

Nvidia acknowledges DLSS shortcomings and is working to fix them

Big quote: "The current experience at these resolutions is not where we want them." Nvidia is working hard to improve DLSS, especially at lower resolutions, after gamers share blurry screenshots rendered by the deep learning neural networks.

Nvidia has recognized that its Deep Learning Super Sampling feature introduced on the RTX series of graphics cards is not yet perfected. Through a Q&A post made by Andrew Edelsten, Nvidia's technical director of deep learning, it is shared that DLSS for resolutions below 4K is going to receive significant attention.

Gamers taking advantage of the latest Battlefield V update that included DLSS support have reported seeing blurry frames on occasion. In response, Nvidia has said, "We have seen the screenshots and are listening to the community’s feedback about DLSS at lower resolutions, and are focusing on it as a top priority." Additional training of neural networks will help bring about higher quality visuals, but training the networks for 1080p gaming is going to take a little longer. As a side note, TechSpot's full take on Battlefield's DLSS update will go live tomorrow morning.

When working with 4K titles, Nvidia has 3.5 to 5.5 million pixels that are usable as an input to their DLSS algorithms compared to a maximum of 1.5 million pixels usable at 1080p. It is far more difficult to render a final frame that looks good to human eyes with less source information available. Going forward, Nvidia will focus on improving DLSS on 1920x1080 and ultrawide monitors running 3440x1440 or similar resolutions.

There are instances where switching on TAA may appear to be slightly better than DLSS for the time being. The trade-off though is that TAA makes use of multiple frames and can cause ghosting or flickering in scenes with high motion rates. DLSS largely eliminates ghosting and flicker, but is not objectively better for all games and combinations of settings.

Besides an incoming update to Battlefield V, Metro Exodus also has an update incoming that was not ready in time for the initial launch. Nvidia is working on neural network training across an expanded portion of the game and is also addressing feedback received over issues with HDR functionality.

In this case, Nvidia has earned a nice shout out for publicly acknowledging problems within a timely manner and also committing to fix them.

Related Reads

Federal government acknowledges it shares terrorist watchlist with private groups

© Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images American flags.

After denying it for years, the federal government admitted that it shares the Terrorist Screening Database — better known as the terrorist watch list — with private entities, The Associated Press reports.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a lawsuit on behalf of several Muslims who say that because their names are wrongfully on the list, they have had to deal with harassment at airports and scrutiny from law enforcement. In September, a government lawyer said during a pre-trial hearing that the Terrorist Screening Center "does not work with private partners" and the list is "considered law enforcement sensitive information and is not shared with the public."

Earlier this month, Terrorist Screening Center Deputy Director of Operations Timothy Groh admitted in a written statement that 1,441 private groups have been granted access to the watchlist. Groh said that in order to receive permission, an organization must be somehow connected to the criminal justice system, AP reports. The government will not reveal how many people are on the list, but has said there are hundreds of thousands of names added every year, and names are regularly removed.

While the list is supposed to only include the names of known or suspected terrorists, critics say people are routinely added that have no ties to terrorism, and this hurts them. A lawyer for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Gadeir Abbas, has asked that the government explain in court which groups have access to the list, and what they are doing with it. "We've always suspected that there was private-sector dissemination of the terror watchlist, but we had no idea the breadth of the dissemination would be so large," he told AP.