Seriously, they couldn't get clear fingerprints??? Was their equipment defective?
I brought up the Sheriff example in the context of private sale background checks. It was a different idea I haven't seen elsewhere. I don't care if it's done by LEO, gun stores, whomever. I understand some of you all don't approve f background checks.
Background checks aren't the problem, it is requiring a private sale to be documented which is. As you may have read, the BATFE was ordered to destroy the NICS information they had been compiling for months (although the law required it to be destroyed within 48 hours). I have no faith that some agency has not continued to compile such data, in violation of their own law. Consider it a matter of trust violated. (Once bitten twice shy, if you will.) If I want to hand someone some money for anything--be it a car, a watch, a firearm, a box of books, whatever, I should not have to go to the government begging their permission to buy it. I know I am an upstanding citizen not given to murder and mayhem, and that's enough.
As
@roamer_1 said, what they don't know I have, they won't know to look for if it comes to that. If it isn't in a record somewhere, the chances of that record being misused or compromised, whether under color of law or not, are nil if no record exists.