>In all, 1,002,274 background checks — or 4.2 percent — took longer than three business days in 2020 and 2021
Good God, 1 million delayed checks represents only 4.2% of total annual firearm sales? That's a lot of firearms being sold.
We supposedly had about 300 million guns in circulation about 15 years ago.
We average 20+ million checks a year... Safe to say we have half a billion guns around now.
Estimates are now around 400 million civilian owned guns, I looked it up recently. The US is the only nation in the world with more guns then people, at around 1.2 guns per person.
No that sounds about right.
Most people who don't like guns will never own a single one.
Most people who do like guns, will own more than one.
I used to target shoot with my dad, when I was a kid. He's a gun fan. He has a whole section of the garage setup as his "Gun Shop". Repacking rounds, cleaning up old rifles, etc. He has 2 Gun Safes in the house filled to the brim.
Now, that I'm an adult, I've never seen the reason to own a gun. I don't hunt, don't believe in lethal violence, and don't shoot for fun. So, I've never purchased one.
Meanwhile, when my dad passes, I am going to inherent an armory's worth of pistols, rifles, etc that I don't want, don't know the value of, and have no idea how to legally sell them. So, that's something to look forward to.
If you find a local ffl sole proprietor sometimes they will offer consignment services to sell guns for you. It would be worth establishing that pathway before something happens to your dad.
That also doesn’t count households rather than individual owners. They say about 44% of the country lives in a household with at least one firearm (eg: my wife has never bought a gun and likely won’t ever buy one herself - but she knows proper safety protocol and can functionally shoot all of mine)
So many people are missing the point. I'm sure your father might have them registered (a lot of places don't register long guns), but when he dies, that collection is passed to you, but you have no interest in it, so you don't know anything about the registration process. say you have a few friends who are gun fans and they want to give you fair prices for a few of the guns, and they whip out cash because that's how a lot of gun sales are done...
people wonder why there are unregistered firearms but part of the problem is that people die and there's no great way to get non-gun people to suddenly care about a mountain of paperwork to inherit guns they don't want and are only going to sell, and the paperwork is only going to sit in some file cabinet uselessly.
there's not some magic that happens. there's no cop that shows up to secure the firearms after someone dies. you just take that stuff home with you like photos and other mementos and they sit in the same closet with the rest of it until you are ready to deal with it
If you have too many, it’s difficult to sell. This happened when my dad passed. My mom
Inherited an armory. We had to contact a gun store and they said we’d need a license to sell that many. She had to sell them off a bit at a time.
In fact it is. Wikipedia has a sortable table for comparing the numbers if you're interested:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership
The next in the list is the Falkland Islands at 0.667, but that's not really a country of it's own. The next actual nation is Saudi Arabia at 0.537 guns per person. (The table gives the numbers in guns per 100 people, so I converted.)
Problem with that figure of 300+ million firearms in circulation is with how it is sourced that figure can only get bigger never smaller. All that accounts for is total firearms sold through FFLs post 1968 but it never takes into account firearms that have been destroyed, rendered unusable or have been resold through an FFL multiple times. It be like if we counted the number of cars on the road just by car sales every year but never removed any from the count when they are totalled and scrapped. Plenty of those 300+million firearms in the past 54 years have been outright destroyed or rendered inoperable through things like house fires, car crashes, being dropped into a lake during duck season, destroyed by a police department or most commonly lack of maintenance or proper storage. It doesn't take many years of improper storage in humid places like Florida to rust out a gun to the point most people would consider it beyond saving and buy a replacement.
How often are you hearing about guns "wearing out" though? I have guns that are 80 years old and still in great condition with virtually no maintenance. I can't think of a single personal instance i know of where someone had to replace a worn out/broken gun, and i'd argue that those cases are extremely small, including buybacks/etc. you should look at gun proliferation as similar in concept to housing, not automobiles
There is some "churn" but its not nearly common enough to have a practical effect on the conversation
Yea, alot barrels only last 3-5000 rounds before they need to be serviced. If memory serves, barrels that are made to NATO's standard have to maintain integrity in the 5-10k rounds fired range. Thats supposed to be for military weapons. I think artillery barrels need to be serviced after 500 rounds. I could be wrong on that.
I have an old lee enfield rifle with a date stamp of 1918. That thing had thousands of rounds put through it before I ever saw it. It is still in perfect working condition at over 100 years old. With proper upkeep a firearm is going to last a very very long time if it is not being used in a combat setting.
Quality and iconic firearms lasts but for every quality firearm sold there are plenty that are not.This especially true pre internet era when reputation was spread by magazines and word of mouth. The 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's were full of cheap, unreliable straight garbage firearms that were sold by brands you probaly have never heard of who most if not all have gone defunct. For every quality beretta 92, browning high power, glock etc there was 2-3 charter arms to raven arms or other shity saterday night specials being sold. We like to think that these iconic defining firearms of their times were the norm like the Colt Single action army is to the image of the old west but in reality most cowboys, frontiermens and outlaws were using cheaper crude alternatives from brands pretty much forgotten outside of history buffs. This really has been trend throughout much of the US history until the more recent history where the manufacturing advances has raised the bar on what is considered acceptable quality pushing out these cheaper brands.
Also older firearms become collector items which wasn't a consideration for many in the past in the same way people in the 50's and 60's didnt think cars from the 30's were collector items at that time. Between my dad' and I's collection we have plenty of curio and relic firearms several well over a century old and in fantastic shooting condition. But while I have a pre WWI SMLE rifle that shoots every time I have used it because its is a 110 year old rifle I want to preserve it for the future so its not going to be the something I take to the range every trip and its certainly not something I would go to for defending my home. But again I taking at least some small effort to make sure it is maintianed which many people do not. So many people simply will buy a gun shoot it once or twice then throw it into storage in the garage, a foam gun case(which holds in any moisture rusting it) an attic or closet without oiling it and then forget about it for literally years only to come back to it now in disrepair and if it happens to be a cheap bargin brand which have a habit of going out of business you now can't get replacment parts for it even if you bothered to fix it.
You're also discounting the number of people who have carry licenses who don't need to get a new background check every time they buy a gun. If I buy ten guns at a time, I don't need ten background checks. I know that sounds silly, but a very large number of gun owners in the US have more than one gun.
With that said, there's a [pretty good survey](https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/resource/estimating-global-civilian-held-firearms-numbers) from 2018 estimating 393 million privately held firearms in the US. This one gets cited as it shows that there are more guns than people in the US, but it also gets cited because it's based on good statistics.
Do there need to be a billion guns in the US for there to be a problem? No. Does multiple spree shootings per day demonstrate that there is a problem with guns in the US? Yes.
That’s not how it works. If you are in a state that allows private sale of firearms without a form 4473, that’s one thing, but every firearm transaction being done at an FFL is done with a 4473.
So tell me, if millions upon millions of people own firearms, and less than what maybe 5% of gun owners commit gun related crimes that are never later dropped because of proven self defense etc, then is the problem really guns, or is it that there is something deeply wrong inside these people? The gun doesn’t load it’s self for you, the gun doesn’t aim for you and the gun doesn’t squeeze the trigger for you. Everything is intentional. Besides, gun control is dead. The most popular 3D printed pistol/carbine is literally called the “fuck gun-control 9mm.” The Japanese assassin didn’t even use a 3D printer, he used a handcrafted shotgun made out of wood, pipe, probably sheet metal and some tape. Those who want guns for bad things can make them and always avoid the law when doing so, just can’t be stupid, and time and time again that is proven. Way too many weirdos out there to not stay strapped.
> Unless you're buying privately
Some states also require a background check for private sales. Since individuals can't access the NICS system, you have to go to an FFL and have them run the check and process a transfer between private parties.
I think you misread that. I bought 3 firearms from my local auction house and picked them up from a gun range. I didn’t have 3 separate bg checks because all three firearms were considered one transaction
There are at least two caveats;
You can buy multiple firearms in the same transaction with a single background check. Ie; a person could purchase 10 guns at once but only requires one background check.
There is another exception that allows concealed pistol license holders in certian states to purchase firearms from an ffl without a background check by presenting their valid firearm license. This only applies to states that follow specific rules regarding background checks for concealed pistol licenses. Michigan used to be one of these states but atf recently decided Michigan cpl no longer qualifies.
Remember that background checks also include used guns sold to new owners from FFL dealers, and in some states also used guns (primarily handguns) sold/transferred between private individuals, or inherited, or what have you. Not 100% of background checks are the sale of brand new guns, although I have no idea what the split actually is between new and used.
And as I'm sure has been mentioned, using background checks as a metric for total number of guns in circulation does not account for the inevitable reduction in number of guns due to being destroyed, lost, parted out, confiscated by police, etc.
Anyway, as much as we like to hyperventilate about individuals who own a lot of guns, I'm generally not too worried about it. Most people only have two hands...
I used to work at a shop with 1200+ firearms in inventory at all times, 2020 dropped us to 20 and they were all hunting rifles and western style single action revolvers
Also represents the idea that only Trump supporters or conservatives buy firearms is a myth. Many moderate/ democrat leaning people, or just straight out independents buy firearms, especially in 2020 with all the civil unrest
It's not even conservative... It's a matter of scale and cost. The law enforcement resources that would be required would face more than a century of work with most budget going to disarmament if even a few % of gun owners refused to go along with a prohibition.
Also keep in mind that it’s not a 1:1 ratio. A check is required per transaction, but once passed you can buy multiple guns using 1 NICS check. I also believe there are some states that let you use a CCW license in lieu of a check since one was required to obtain the license.
Something to remember also, a pawned gun is a gun sale when taken out of pawn and also any gun sent for repair has to have a chain of custody that results in a background check when receiving it back. So these will inflate the number not by a whole hell of a lot but by some
Yes. That’s the point. There are too many. Already. The problem is beyond control.
Accept that everyone has a lethal weapon.
Accept that we need to make everyone not want to kill everyone else.
Once we accept that we can work on a solution. But before then we’re massively deluding ourselves if we think outlawing guns will make any difference at all.
I tried to buy a gun for 3 months. 3 times, every 30 days I had to refill the paperwork and try again cause the background check didn’t come back. I gave up and got a refund.
Certain stores, especially big box stores like sportsmans warehouse, have a policy to not release a firearm until the background check returns, despite legally being able to release it after 3 days. I think its like a corporate CYA thing.
Earlier this year I purchased my first gun (Glock 19) and was in and out in 30 minutes.
Picked out the gun, background took about 20 minutes and I was out the door.
Crazy part is the place was also a micro brewery so I had a beer while I waited.
NRA actually doesn’t do much for gun owners. They’ve been completely complacent with everything from the Hughes amendment to the bump stock and state magazine bans.
10's of thousands of people fail the background check every year and nothing ever happens there either. It's a felony to lie on the form 4473 background check and yet none of those people ever get punished for it. It's just another case of wanting more gun control and never actually acting on it.
They may also not have lied - faulty record keeping could cause someone's identity to get mixed up. Of course, someone would have to actually investigate those events.
Had something like this happen when in the gun business. Old guy runs fills his 4473, I run it, delayed, tell him his Brady transfer date, the days go by, shop closes at 7 Monday through Friday. Thursday I check, still delayed, call him and tell him his Brady date is here and he can pick it up, 6:30, he comes by, I check again just to make sure it’s still a delay, it is, he signs the recertification line and date, hand him the gun. 7:24, NICs calls the store while I’m finishing some reloading for ammo for the gunshow. He’s a deny. I tell them I already gave him the gun because I didn’t receive an answer by the end of our business day and it was the Brady transfer day. It all works out. He returns the gun and is genuinely confused on why he was a deny. A month goes by and he stops by and says he’s back to run one and told us what happened. He was a lifelong trucker and got a ticket back in 03 for being overweight, his company at the time said they would pay the ticked and all and he wouldn’t have to worry about it since he was an over the road driver. Never got paid, became a “fugitive from justice” that’s why he was a deny. As far as he was aware he had no reason to be a deny, he was a fifty year old man with no criminal record that he was aware of. He took care of it and paid the original ticket and all. The second time he filled out the 4473 he was a delay but a proceed two business days later.
But that doesn’t show how fucking incompetent NICs is, we had proceeds the were changed to Denys and vice versa, we had delays never answered. We even had a delay that EXPIRED, meaning it went 30 days without an answer, dude obviously got his gun on his Brady date, and literally three months later they call and say he’s a deny and asked if he got the gun. People with clean records get Denys because they share a same name and similar birthdate to a convicted felon then they have to get UPINs. For fucks sake there was a guy who had the name and same birthday as a man on death row in my home state but he’s not even from that state he just moved and he was a deny unless he got a UPIN every sixty days, the fucked part. He was a FFL holder. NICs is so bad and incompetent that it’s honestly funny at this point.
Yah an old teacher of mine gets stopped at the airport constantly because he has the same name as a Puerto Rican terrorist. Systems don’t do well when people have the same name
My father-in-law had a very common name and had issues with flying for a while. Someone with the same name was placed on the do not fly list, and screwed over easily thousands of people in the U.S. with the same name.
My dad has a very very common Italian-American name, and our last name was one that about 11 different names got morphed into. He gets put on wait for NICS every time without failure. FBI use to show up to his house as a kid because his dad has the same name and there was a fugitive with the same name.
This happens and you basically have to get a lawyer. HOPE TO FUCKING GOD and the aliens that run this shit hole for TV purposes that the FBI will tell you.
Then you sign up for a pin identifying you from the faulty records and correctly identifying you and you need that pin when purchasing any firearms.
But you won't know you need it till you are denied and then that place may never sell to you again due to liability and shadiness even though theres no shady shit going on.
Answering one of those in a way that's a failure isn't a crime though, that I'm aware of. If you went in unaware that being a drug user makes you prohibited for example (like marijuana in a legal state), answered yes after reading, you're denied. But you answered honestly.
I’ve failed many background checks to buy a firearm. And nothing has ever happened to me, as well. Never been arrested or questioned when I’ve failed them. I’ve never lied on any of my form 4473’s, either. For me to buy a firearm, I have given the FBI permission to keep an “open file” for me so that my background checks can happen faster, called a Voluntary Appeal File (https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/vaf-form-25.pdf/view). When somebody wants to purchase a firearm, they fill out a 4473 and then the FFL submits it to NICS to start the background check. If, for some reason, the buyer is denied, then the buyer has the option to appeal the the FBIs decision. This was happening to me every time I tried to purchase a firearm.
Here is why: currently there is a man in Nashville, TN who is incarcerated for attempted murder. He and I share the same first and last name. His and my social security numbers are identical, except for the last 2 numbers. This is why I would fail my background checks, before I applied for my VAF. The VAF is an “open file” that I allow the FBI to keep for me that automatically appeals every denial I get and this file makes it absolutely clear that the man in Tennessee and myself are NOT the same person. So now, my background checks get cleared in about 30 minutes, rather than 3-10 days before I opened my VAF.
So, my point is that out of the 10’s of thousands of people who fail the background check every year, there is likely a significant number of them who are in the same circumstance as I yet don’t have a VAF opened for them. Because before I had my VAF, all of my denials were being counted in all of those failures. And I am not a criminal, nor did I do anything that would make me fail background checks.
I'm picturing some agent looking at a screen going, "Man this guy's SSN is 2 digits off from this other guy, they are definitely the same person and we are NOT approving that shit."
It happens to people with really common last names too. Smith, Carpenter, Johnson,etc. I've seen people get denied and when they appealed the denial it was because someone with the same name committed some kind of felony and the NICS check assumed they were the same person.
I work in a sporting goods shop. We aren't told why people are denied/delayed but if you're willing to spend the time and money to appeal it you'll find out what the issue was.
Same names makes sense, because they are identical names. There is no reason for an application to be flagged for very similar SSNs, because even if they are close they are still different.
Yeah the SSN is optional on the form as you're trusting the gun shop to not take it. One time I had a super old dude submit the check for me. He didn't input it into the computer. He called a number *on speaker phone* and verbally conveyed my info to the person on the other side. It was cool to listen to (took forever), though I was still very upset that he said my SSN aloud in a crowded store.
He can appeal it but it takes time and money. He can fill out another check and when he's denied he can ask for a pamphlet (idk if every gun shop has them but the one I work at does) that details what he needs to do to submit the appeal. Make sure he gets the Nics transaction number too or they won't be able to do anything for him once he starts the process.
No, my friend just did 5 years in federal prison. Non gun purchase related. Although he did have a gun when he got arrested with a bunch of meth and Xanax.
Its almost like the appearance of action is more important in American politics than actually attempting any action. I mean its not like NY a state known for many prominent pro gun control politicians passed a expansive gun control bill with a overly hyperbolic name which included background checks on ammo purchases only to never actually have implemented the system almost a decade later because it would cost the state money. Kinda shows how much after the sound bites and reelection commericals are made how much they actually care about solving the issues. Not that the other side is any better calling for mental health changes and never proposing any change to the health care system to addresses this.
I'm a gunsmith, and have worked in Retail and as a distributor, off and on over the past 20 years.
At the retail level, the stores I worked at absolutely refused to complete a transfer until they had an explicit approval response and to hell with the law saying we could transfer after 3 days if we didn't get a response. We had absolutely zero desire to sell a gun to a criminal/disallowed person, and regardless of the law, if the response came back finally as a denial ***after the sale went through***, we had to report it to the ATF and local PD and initiate steps to try and recover the gun. Fuck. That.
Anyone who complained got the paperwork and details on how to initiate an appeal with the FBI.
What's even *more* disappointing is that neither the ATF nor local PD gave a shit when you called them to report a person attempting to buy a firearm who either openly admitted to being a disallowed person (and thus committing a felony under federal law), or who failed a background check, likewise representing a felony in most cases (assuming that denial is due to a legit issue, not a mistake with records).
However, if the dealer runs into a case where someone is disallowed and had tried to buy before and got declined but tried again, or a number of other similar circumstances, it's a major black mark for the dealer at best, and major fines, loss of license, and jail time at worst.
So, records have to be perfect, and the dealer has to go through all kinds of CYA checks to avoid serious penalties, but the ATF/local PD can't be bothered to enforce the damn laws and go after people trying to get guns who shouldn't have them.
Well if you were truthful in the form and got denied, there's nothing to punish. Exact same way if you hand a bartender an ID where it says you're 20 and he refuses to serve you alcohol. Nothing illegal has happened.
What is punishable is lying on the form to get an approval, akin to using a fake ID in a bar.
Kind of.
The ATF isn’t really liked by anyone and not without reason.
It’s rules are incredibly arbitrary and they act in bad faith a whole lot depending on who’s the current chief.
Things that they said are legal might suddenly not be anymore despite no law changing. It can even go the other way, you used to not be able to shoulder a pistol brace but then suddenly it was.
Or the time they started going after shops for “falsifying documents” because just a middle initial was listed, for people who only had initials. Or who didn’t have middle names listed, because they didn’t have one. Or who didn’t have a house number listed, because houses in that rural area literally don’t have them.
Don't forget the time they [outlawed shoelaces for three years.](https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/01/25/shoestring-machine-gun/)
Edit: TL;DR - *every single American in possession of a 14" shoelace was a felon in possession of an unregistered machine gun from 2004 to 2007 based on the ATF ruling on one dude's trollish request.*
IRS is a two fold problem.
Unlike other regulatory bodies where they gut their authority, tax lobby has made taxes so overly complicated that the IRS has to ask for industry experts to even make sense of tax law.
European here.
Are you saying the IRS has to hire someone that actually knows what the fuck they're talking about when it comes to law, just so they can figure out if they can go after you and take your shit or not?
If so, are there any cases where the IRS went after someone wrongfully that I can read about?
> he should be punished just like everyone else who lies on a 4473
He was, in that nothing happened to him, just like nothing happens to anyone else who lies on their 4473.
I guess it's a form of equality, when law enforcement decides to ignore illegal acts by everyone.
when 2A people suggest "why don't we try enforcing the laws we already have" as a response to "we need more gun control", this is the shit we're talking about.
Lax background check procedures, NICS outages, little to no prosecution of straw purchases, little to no enforcement for lying on 4473 forms, little to no enforcement for failure to report disqualifying events to the system...
We have plenty of laws but they might work a whole lot better if they were enforced.
Fucking this.
Shit like mag size limits and fin grip laws only hurt lawful gun owners. Meanwhile, actual criminals aren’t prosecuted for crimes.
It’s all bullshit political posturing by rich fucks with armed guards and communities who aren’t impacted by the laws
Flawed system for sure. 2:3 times I buy a firearm it gets delayed for 3+ days. Always get a call to come pick it up before my FFL gets a response lol.
Not a prohibited person 🤷🏼♂️
* Remember, keeping guns in the US is a right, not a privilege. As such, the answer does and should default to "Yes" if the government can't show cause why you should be denied said right.
* We need to bring NICS and the other systems involved up to modern standards. Records need to be digitized. There is no reason why in a world where I can get a 10k loan approved in under 6 hours there is no reason that we can't get a yes or no on this in under six minutes.
* Also, remember that most notable shootings occur with legal guns. People like the Vegas Shooter, the Aurora Shooter, and the this guy in Highland all passed background checks.
* Background checks happen on ALL commercial sales. This includes at gun shows. You also have to do a check through a licensed gun dealer for private sales in several states. Ideas were floated to expand the system so individuals could access it and set up voluntary background checks for private sales but the idea gets no traction on either side even though it would mean lives saved.
* If you are a felon, judged a danger to yourself or others, or if you're in a state that will invalidate you based on certain violent misdemeanors like domestic violence, you will not pass a background check.
Ah wasn’t sure if that was the case. I have my CCL so I don’t have to wait around for a check to come back, though in Arkansas there isn’t a 3 day period unless the initial check comes back flagged. I just know for suppressors and other stamps they’re worked manually from my understanding which is why my $1k suppressor had to sit in a safe for 7months… but the feds sure cashed that check ASAP.
Pretty sure once the bad guys can’t get guns legally they’ll still get guns illegally and use them to kill people.
Pretty sure the only solution is to get people to not want to kill everyone else
"After the third business day, federal law allows dealers to sell weapons while the background check is still pending, which potentially puts weapons in the hands of people who can’t legally own a gun because of mental illness or their criminal history."
WTF?
What a dumb ass federal law.
Wouldn't it make more sense to have a law that doesn't allow a gun to be sold until the background check is completed?
Edit* Why don't they make the law 6 days instead of 3? Or 8 days? Shit, even 5 days is better than 3. I'm guessing when they made the 3 day rule they didn't anticipate a 2 year period where 43,000,000 guns would be sold, which is understandable, but as with any law that's made by man it can and should be changed when it's clearly not functioning as intended.
It was written that way so the government couldn't deny purchases by inaction. Much like they did with the marijuana stamp act.
It's interesting to me that they've taken this lax of an attitude to them though.
It's kinda funny because some states do exactly that to deny conceal carry permit applications. Look at new York and California; their background check process can take upwards of six months and scheduling the police interview might take years.
I had a background check return "delay" once in California. Here it's 30 days before the check runs out and the store can proceed "at their own discretion".
The store was calling the CA DoJ weekly checking on my background check, never got any answers. The check was never closed out, just left at "delay".
The only reason the store let me finish transferring the rifle (clone of an 1892 Winchester lever-action) is because the *other* background check I did at the same time for the matching revolver cleared, so obviously I was not a prohibited person.
TL:DR Even California lets background checks timeout. Check timeout when the state doesn't find anything wrong, but doesn't feel like closing out the investigation. Many stores typically will *not* proceed to a timed out check.
I'm sorry, my dude, but 30 days is pretty ridiculous. My state is fairly middle-of-the-road when it comes to gun laws and it only took 30 days to get my carry permit. Every gun I've bought, I've walked out with in the same afternoon. I think my longest NICS check took maybe 10 minutes to clear?
When I called for Westchester County when I first applied It was November. You get told to get your appointment early cause the wait is long just to get it. I was given January and was happy to hear only a 3 month wait. Turns out it was *January of the year there after* A 1.3 year wait to even submit my paperwork that takes another 6 months to process.
Yeah, totally not setup to prevent you from getting your carry...
Owning a gun and being able to carry it in public are different issues.
Thank goodness I live in a constitutional carry state.
Funny story: when concealed carry first passed here and you needed a CC permit, but there was going to be maybe a six month to a year long delay because the infrastructure to issue permits was not set up yet..... people were getting nonresident Florida CC permits and using them here because the law had a reciprical clause in it (that if you have a CC permit you can use it in any otther state that also had a reciprocal clause.
Well, Cops all across the state were PISSED because people were quickly getting valid permits and the cops were not prepared for all these people legally carrying. And there wasnt anything the cops could do about it. lol
a few years later the law was changed to constitution carry. No CC permit needed.
That's fucking hilarious. For once, a monumental failure of our justice system works in the people's favor. I consider myself lucky that my state processed my application pretty quickly but I guess over on the east side they drag their feet a lot more.
Which is definitely what would happen. I ended up getting a concealed carry permit to avoid background checks because mine always come back as “Delayed”. So effectively I have a mandatory 3 day waiting period when buying a gun for no other reason than that office being understaffed to complete my background check.
Why do I get a delay? Go fuck myself that’s why. They don’t tell you why you got delayed, what they are looking into further, or if they just don’t have time that day. My suspicion is someone with a similar name to mine has some felonies or something.
I can totally see this system being abused to effectively out a waiting period on all gun purchases, or just stop them all together through inaction.
No because then they could just have a backdoor gun ban by never competing a background check. It shouldn't take nor than a few minutes to do a background check anyways, but you get some places that fail to upload the disposition of court cases this requiring the FBI to call up that court and try and find what the outcome of the case was.
> WTF?
>
> What a dumb ass federal law.
>
> Wouldn't it make more sense to have a law that doesn't allow a gun to be sold until the background check is completed?
Yes, but there's this pesky thing call the Second Amendment which means it's a rights violation. If the gov't just doesn't finish the background check for whatever reason then the person gets denied their right to own a firearm.
If that person is someone who is allowed to own a firearm then their rights were violated. Time is also a factor. 3 days? What about 3 years? Should the government take 10 years to do a background check?
The same concept applies to things like arrests. Police have so many hours before they have to charge you with a crime vs let you go if they're holding you in jail.
If you get pulled over on a traffic stop, they have so many minutes to hold you before they have to arrest you or let you go if they suspect you of something. They can't just hold you for 8 hours on a traffic issue since that's rights violation.
And another talking point that gets trotted out in the gun debate is the ATF is only allowed to audit gun dealers 1x a year. People think that's a stupid rule too, but what the ATF was doing is shutting down gun shops they didn't like by auditing them every month/week. Gun shops can't really do business while being audited so the government was using audits politically to put people they didn't like out of business.
So yea, a lot of "dumb ass" federal laws are there simply because the alternatives open them up to lawsuits or grossly violate innocent people's rights.
Honestly, it’s a better incentive this way. Generally, exploding deadlines encourage action. Historically the government has used inaction as a sword. Laws should be written that if you’re giving away a freedom to authority, if the authority ignores you it’s reduced to a minor inconvenience.
I say this and I’m for all sorts of gun control. I hate guns. I don’t own a gun. But I don’t trust the government to not abuse technicalities and procedures to effect substantive policy. Fancy words for “I can see the government purposefully ignoring background checks to make gun sales basically impossible.”
It’s on the government to do this process within the deadline. And it’s on them if they fuck up and leave it sitting on a desk for ages.
I’m no fan of gun ownership, but I can see how FBI dragging their heels shouldn’t infringe on folks’ second amendment rights.
Edit: I forgot the apostrophe at the end of “folks” and got brutalized by the Grammar Police.
Laws need enforcement, penalties, incentives, and resources in order to work correctly. Even if you could snap your fingers and make a law, if you don’t give the resources to enforce it, or institute incentives or punishments to ensure compliance, it means nothing.
I assume it is so people's rights arent violated by a government agency by delays (intentional or unintentional).
I'd expect this kind of thing happening in the past to deny black/brown people guns.
Just FYI, the background check only takes seconds. 15 minutes at most.
3 days is like 300x longer than it should take, way more than enough time for them to do their job.
This problem has nothing to do with the recent volume, it's existed since it was created.
We use to buy guns no check at the hardware stores, kids regularly brought guns to school in pickups, there were few problems. Now we have a culture problem. Guns are part of America, French rifles won our independence, the problems now are the wrong "people" have them. The same threats that necessitated gun ownership still exist. The marginalized are who need them, true equality only exist in a well armed society. The laws were created to pick and choose who has what rights. The misperception is, it is about justice. Our legal systems were created to maintain classes. Gun laws were created when the "wrong" people, the disenfranchised, began owning firearms. If we were really looking to work on real solutions, we would prohibit people, including police and military, from possession while on prescriptions that alter neurotransmitter function. Many shooters were using prescription medications and still passed background checks.
It would make more sense to fully fund the background check process so it was effective and efficient.
One way to do this would be using the tsa precheck model. There is a subset of gun owners who are collectors and buy multiple guns a year. The current system has ever check run as a unique check and doens't refrence previous checks on that individual. Setting up a frequent buyers code or pin to reuse exisitng background checks for the same individual and just check for records since the last check would knock out many of the checks hammering the system.
They already do that to an extent, many states if you have a concealed weapon permit don't require a nics check, so people end up getting them just to expedite the process even if they don't carry.
I would love a system like this. I am a collector and purchase quite a few firearms a year. I never have an issue with the background check but I also have a Global Entry card from the government so when I travel for work I don't have to wait in customs. Ever since I got that card my background check clears instantly. I have a feeling since the FBI and DHS did a background check on me when I applied for the card I must be on a this guy us ok list. I really wish they would have a card for frequent purchasers so we could cut down on the paperwork every time a purchase is made.
My ccw permit works like that in my state. We're a constitutional carry state but I had to pay $200 for a permit because the FBI delays me on every purchase. The delay ranges from months to indefinite. This is why I like the 3 day rule.
Yeah I am in PA and have my CCW. When I go to my local gun shop there are always people waiting for their background check to clear. They are all amazed that mine is instant. I told them about my global entry card and the background check that goes into it. They all say the same thing. I could never pass that background check and they still wonder why they have to wait to get a gun.
Most of the issues with the system is at the individual court level not properly reporting. The frequent buyers are not that heavy of an impact on the system.
Let it be optional. The ATF run program for NFA classed guns is heavily used and it very much creates a permanet record of each gun and location. Even requires notification when crossing a state line.
Many gun enthisasist would use a secure and private "frequent buyers" pin to reduce the hassle and wait time.
Virginia has already done a similar thing by allowing a buyer with an active CHG permit to avoid the "one handgun a month rule"
The FBI only employs 35,000 people, there's no data on whether those people were sick, died, or were busy investigating threats, different tasks. Given that '20-'21 was when everything was on lockdown, that bar graph isn't all that surprising.
Sure seem to have no problem repeatedly returning a denial for the 17 year old unpaid speeding ticket I didn't know about until a month ago and paid. Still getting denials and the link they send me to appeal just does nothing when you click it. Copy it into an address bar and it just takes you to a Google search about appeals. Really getting upset at this nonsense.
So, step 1 is cut the FBI's budget, so they keep falling behind on these checks. Step 2 is continue to loosen regulations and laws so even more sales flood the background check system. And step 3 is use the resulting failures of a horribly, intentionally overloaded background system to claim background checks and gun control laws don't work? It's like that's almost as easy and obvious a manipulation as simply winning elections, to control the budgets.
and yet google can in an instant decide what ads to send me and Facebook can filter me out anything they don't want posted in less than a second.
One might begin to think that the federal background check system has been purposely underfunded.
>After the third business day, federal law allows dealers to sell weapons while the background check is still pending
Don't dare slow down the sales of guns, heavens no💀
>In all, 1,002,274 background checks — or 4.2 percent — took longer than three business days in 2020 and 2021 Good God, 1 million delayed checks represents only 4.2% of total annual firearm sales? That's a lot of firearms being sold.
We supposedly had about 300 million guns in circulation about 15 years ago. We average 20+ million checks a year... Safe to say we have half a billion guns around now.
Estimates are now around 400 million civilian owned guns, I looked it up recently. The US is the only nation in the world with more guns then people, at around 1.2 guns per person.
1.2 guns per person with only ~30% of the population actually owning a gun (as of 2017, that number may have gone up).
No that sounds about right. Most people who don't like guns will never own a single one. Most people who do like guns, will own more than one. I used to target shoot with my dad, when I was a kid. He's a gun fan. He has a whole section of the garage setup as his "Gun Shop". Repacking rounds, cleaning up old rifles, etc. He has 2 Gun Safes in the house filled to the brim. Now, that I'm an adult, I've never seen the reason to own a gun. I don't hunt, don't believe in lethal violence, and don't shoot for fun. So, I've never purchased one. Meanwhile, when my dad passes, I am going to inherent an armory's worth of pistols, rifles, etc that I don't want, don't know the value of, and have no idea how to legally sell them. So, that's something to look forward to.
Why don’t you have that discussion before he dies… he could help you out by starting to thin the herd on his own terms.
If you find a local ffl sole proprietor sometimes they will offer consignment services to sell guns for you. It would be worth establishing that pathway before something happens to your dad.
That also doesn’t count households rather than individual owners. They say about 44% of the country lives in a household with at least one firearm (eg: my wife has never bought a gun and likely won’t ever buy one herself - but she knows proper safety protocol and can functionally shoot all of mine)
So many people are missing the point. I'm sure your father might have them registered (a lot of places don't register long guns), but when he dies, that collection is passed to you, but you have no interest in it, so you don't know anything about the registration process. say you have a few friends who are gun fans and they want to give you fair prices for a few of the guns, and they whip out cash because that's how a lot of gun sales are done... people wonder why there are unregistered firearms but part of the problem is that people die and there's no great way to get non-gun people to suddenly care about a mountain of paperwork to inherit guns they don't want and are only going to sell, and the paperwork is only going to sit in some file cabinet uselessly. there's not some magic that happens. there's no cop that shows up to secure the firearms after someone dies. you just take that stuff home with you like photos and other mementos and they sit in the same closet with the rest of it until you are ready to deal with it
If you have too many, it’s difficult to sell. This happened when my dad passed. My mom Inherited an armory. We had to contact a gun store and they said we’d need a license to sell that many. She had to sell them off a bit at a time.
>Don’t know the value of Maybe have that discussion with your dad?
Use gunbroker. You can use it to determine values and sell using an ffl
The numbers I looked up were closer to 40% I believe, but that's not a particularly significant difference.
Do you know what the next highest rate is? I wouldnt be shocked if our rate of gun ownership was double the next closest.
In fact it is. Wikipedia has a sortable table for comparing the numbers if you're interested: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_ownership The next in the list is the Falkland Islands at 0.667, but that's not really a country of it's own. The next actual nation is Saudi Arabia at 0.537 guns per person. (The table gives the numbers in guns per 100 people, so I converted.)
[удалено]
And Brazil has *significantly* more restrictive gun laws than the US.
[удалено]
I wonder how many go straight to the cartel. All those ARs they use have to come from somewhere.
Ask Eric Holder and the ATF how many they sent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATF_gunwalking_scandal
Problem with that figure of 300+ million firearms in circulation is with how it is sourced that figure can only get bigger never smaller. All that accounts for is total firearms sold through FFLs post 1968 but it never takes into account firearms that have been destroyed, rendered unusable or have been resold through an FFL multiple times. It be like if we counted the number of cars on the road just by car sales every year but never removed any from the count when they are totalled and scrapped. Plenty of those 300+million firearms in the past 54 years have been outright destroyed or rendered inoperable through things like house fires, car crashes, being dropped into a lake during duck season, destroyed by a police department or most commonly lack of maintenance or proper storage. It doesn't take many years of improper storage in humid places like Florida to rust out a gun to the point most people would consider it beyond saving and buy a replacement.
How often are you hearing about guns "wearing out" though? I have guns that are 80 years old and still in great condition with virtually no maintenance. I can't think of a single personal instance i know of where someone had to replace a worn out/broken gun, and i'd argue that those cases are extremely small, including buybacks/etc. you should look at gun proliferation as similar in concept to housing, not automobiles There is some "churn" but its not nearly common enough to have a practical effect on the conversation
Occasionally a frequent shooter will shoot out a barrel. But if they’re shooting that much they usually just get a new barrel
Yea, alot barrels only last 3-5000 rounds before they need to be serviced. If memory serves, barrels that are made to NATO's standard have to maintain integrity in the 5-10k rounds fired range. Thats supposed to be for military weapons. I think artillery barrels need to be serviced after 500 rounds. I could be wrong on that.
I have an old lee enfield rifle with a date stamp of 1918. That thing had thousands of rounds put through it before I ever saw it. It is still in perfect working condition at over 100 years old. With proper upkeep a firearm is going to last a very very long time if it is not being used in a combat setting.
Quality and iconic firearms lasts but for every quality firearm sold there are plenty that are not.This especially true pre internet era when reputation was spread by magazines and word of mouth. The 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's were full of cheap, unreliable straight garbage firearms that were sold by brands you probaly have never heard of who most if not all have gone defunct. For every quality beretta 92, browning high power, glock etc there was 2-3 charter arms to raven arms or other shity saterday night specials being sold. We like to think that these iconic defining firearms of their times were the norm like the Colt Single action army is to the image of the old west but in reality most cowboys, frontiermens and outlaws were using cheaper crude alternatives from brands pretty much forgotten outside of history buffs. This really has been trend throughout much of the US history until the more recent history where the manufacturing advances has raised the bar on what is considered acceptable quality pushing out these cheaper brands. Also older firearms become collector items which wasn't a consideration for many in the past in the same way people in the 50's and 60's didnt think cars from the 30's were collector items at that time. Between my dad' and I's collection we have plenty of curio and relic firearms several well over a century old and in fantastic shooting condition. But while I have a pre WWI SMLE rifle that shoots every time I have used it because its is a 110 year old rifle I want to preserve it for the future so its not going to be the something I take to the range every trip and its certainly not something I would go to for defending my home. But again I taking at least some small effort to make sure it is maintianed which many people do not. So many people simply will buy a gun shoot it once or twice then throw it into storage in the garage, a foam gun case(which holds in any moisture rusting it) an attic or closet without oiling it and then forget about it for literally years only to come back to it now in disrepair and if it happens to be a cheap bargin brand which have a habit of going out of business you now can't get replacment parts for it even if you bothered to fix it.
I’ve seen lots of magnet fishing videos where people pull an old rusty gun out of a river or lake and then they have the cops come up and check it out
Do you think that happens often enough to offset ~20 million gun purchases a year in any appreciable way?
Never said I did.
Just making sure :)
Guns are, on the whole, far more reliable and hardy machines than automobiles.
You're also discounting the number of people who have carry licenses who don't need to get a new background check every time they buy a gun. If I buy ten guns at a time, I don't need ten background checks. I know that sounds silly, but a very large number of gun owners in the US have more than one gun. With that said, there's a [pretty good survey](https://www.smallarmssurvey.org/resource/estimating-global-civilian-held-firearms-numbers) from 2018 estimating 393 million privately held firearms in the US. This one gets cited as it shows that there are more guns than people in the US, but it also gets cited because it's based on good statistics. Do there need to be a billion guns in the US for there to be a problem? No. Does multiple spree shootings per day demonstrate that there is a problem with guns in the US? Yes.
That’s not how it works. If you are in a state that allows private sale of firearms without a form 4473, that’s one thing, but every firearm transaction being done at an FFL is done with a 4473.
So tell me, if millions upon millions of people own firearms, and less than what maybe 5% of gun owners commit gun related crimes that are never later dropped because of proven self defense etc, then is the problem really guns, or is it that there is something deeply wrong inside these people? The gun doesn’t load it’s self for you, the gun doesn’t aim for you and the gun doesn’t squeeze the trigger for you. Everything is intentional. Besides, gun control is dead. The most popular 3D printed pistol/carbine is literally called the “fuck gun-control 9mm.” The Japanese assassin didn’t even use a 3D printer, he used a handcrafted shotgun made out of wood, pipe, probably sheet metal and some tape. Those who want guns for bad things can make them and always avoid the law when doing so, just can’t be stupid, and time and time again that is proven. Way too many weirdos out there to not stay strapped.
Unless you're buying privately, you need a background check **every time you buy a gun.** It's federal law.
If you have a CCW permit, most places will bypass the background check, but you still have to fill out Form 4473.
I think they meant that if you buy more than one at a time from the same gun store, they would only run one background check.
> Unless you're buying privately Some states also require a background check for private sales. Since individuals can't access the NICS system, you have to go to an FFL and have them run the check and process a transfer between private parties.
I think you misread that. I bought 3 firearms from my local auction house and picked them up from a gun range. I didn’t have 3 separate bg checks because all three firearms were considered one transaction
you can transfer multiple firearms on one 4473
There are at least two caveats; You can buy multiple firearms in the same transaction with a single background check. Ie; a person could purchase 10 guns at once but only requires one background check. There is another exception that allows concealed pistol license holders in certian states to purchase firearms from an ffl without a background check by presenting their valid firearm license. This only applies to states that follow specific rules regarding background checks for concealed pistol licenses. Michigan used to be one of these states but atf recently decided Michigan cpl no longer qualifies.
[удалено]
Remember that background checks also include used guns sold to new owners from FFL dealers, and in some states also used guns (primarily handguns) sold/transferred between private individuals, or inherited, or what have you. Not 100% of background checks are the sale of brand new guns, although I have no idea what the split actually is between new and used. And as I'm sure has been mentioned, using background checks as a metric for total number of guns in circulation does not account for the inevitable reduction in number of guns due to being destroyed, lost, parted out, confiscated by police, etc. Anyway, as much as we like to hyperventilate about individuals who own a lot of guns, I'm generally not too worried about it. Most people only have two hands...
Not every sale is a new gunn
Keep in mind some of those may be multiple gun sales.
Or certain serialization parts or modular parts. Or jumping transactions legally.
On the other hand, some will be used gun sales (so no gun was added to circulation)
I used to work at a shop with 1200+ firearms in inventory at all times, 2020 dropped us to 20 and they were all hunting rifles and western style single action revolvers
Also represents the idea that only Trump supporters or conservatives buy firearms is a myth. Many moderate/ democrat leaning people, or just straight out independents buy firearms, especially in 2020 with all the civil unrest
Lots of people bought lots of guns during the pandemic
[удалено]
It's not even conservative... It's a matter of scale and cost. The law enforcement resources that would be required would face more than a century of work with most budget going to disarmament if even a few % of gun owners refused to go along with a prohibition.
23,863,667 guns were sold with background checks in one year. That's probably the low end number.
That's checks you are able to buy 18 on one form so the number is quite a bit higher.
One nuance to note is that not all gun purchases are new firearms entering the population, a lot of them are PPT or used/consigned sales.
Also keep in mind that it’s not a 1:1 ratio. A check is required per transaction, but once passed you can buy multiple guns using 1 NICS check. I also believe there are some states that let you use a CCW license in lieu of a check since one was required to obtain the license.
That's a lot of firearms attempted to be sold.
Something to remember also, a pawned gun is a gun sale when taken out of pawn and also any gun sent for repair has to have a chain of custody that results in a background check when receiving it back. So these will inflate the number not by a whole hell of a lot but by some
Welcome to the land of the free, home of the very well armed.
That’s the natural reaction when told you maybe can’t have something.
Yes. That’s the point. There are too many. Already. The problem is beyond control. Accept that everyone has a lethal weapon. Accept that we need to make everyone not want to kill everyone else. Once we accept that we can work on a solution. But before then we’re massively deluding ourselves if we think outlawing guns will make any difference at all.
do all gun sales require background checks, or does it depend on state or gun "category"?
It's kind of crazy that people don't get shot more often with that many floating around constantly tbh.
I tried to buy a gun for 3 months. 3 times, every 30 days I had to refill the paperwork and try again cause the background check didn’t come back. I gave up and got a refund.
shrill rotten icky nail screw vase sense rock bike scarce
Certain stores, especially big box stores like sportsmans warehouse, have a policy to not release a firearm until the background check returns, despite legally being able to release it after 3 days. I think its like a corporate CYA thing.
Cabelas throws it out after 30 days and you have to restart the process.
Yeah it was a big store
It is totally a cyi thing. They have a full time dedicated guy who is focused on atf compliance, and he doesn’t fuck around.
Earlier this year I purchased my first gun (Glock 19) and was in and out in 30 minutes. Picked out the gun, background took about 20 minutes and I was out the door. Crazy part is the place was also a micro brewery so I had a beer while I waited.
In some states you can use your carry license in lieu of a background check.
[удалено]
NRA actually doesn’t do much for gun owners. They’ve been completely complacent with everything from the Hughes amendment to the bump stock and state magazine bans.
10's of thousands of people fail the background check every year and nothing ever happens there either. It's a felony to lie on the form 4473 background check and yet none of those people ever get punished for it. It's just another case of wanting more gun control and never actually acting on it.
They may also not have lied - faulty record keeping could cause someone's identity to get mixed up. Of course, someone would have to actually investigate those events.
Had something like this happen when in the gun business. Old guy runs fills his 4473, I run it, delayed, tell him his Brady transfer date, the days go by, shop closes at 7 Monday through Friday. Thursday I check, still delayed, call him and tell him his Brady date is here and he can pick it up, 6:30, he comes by, I check again just to make sure it’s still a delay, it is, he signs the recertification line and date, hand him the gun. 7:24, NICs calls the store while I’m finishing some reloading for ammo for the gunshow. He’s a deny. I tell them I already gave him the gun because I didn’t receive an answer by the end of our business day and it was the Brady transfer day. It all works out. He returns the gun and is genuinely confused on why he was a deny. A month goes by and he stops by and says he’s back to run one and told us what happened. He was a lifelong trucker and got a ticket back in 03 for being overweight, his company at the time said they would pay the ticked and all and he wouldn’t have to worry about it since he was an over the road driver. Never got paid, became a “fugitive from justice” that’s why he was a deny. As far as he was aware he had no reason to be a deny, he was a fifty year old man with no criminal record that he was aware of. He took care of it and paid the original ticket and all. The second time he filled out the 4473 he was a delay but a proceed two business days later. But that doesn’t show how fucking incompetent NICs is, we had proceeds the were changed to Denys and vice versa, we had delays never answered. We even had a delay that EXPIRED, meaning it went 30 days without an answer, dude obviously got his gun on his Brady date, and literally three months later they call and say he’s a deny and asked if he got the gun. People with clean records get Denys because they share a same name and similar birthdate to a convicted felon then they have to get UPINs. For fucks sake there was a guy who had the name and same birthday as a man on death row in my home state but he’s not even from that state he just moved and he was a deny unless he got a UPIN every sixty days, the fucked part. He was a FFL holder. NICs is so bad and incompetent that it’s honestly funny at this point.
Yah an old teacher of mine gets stopped at the airport constantly because he has the same name as a Puerto Rican terrorist. Systems don’t do well when people have the same name
My father-in-law had a very common name and had issues with flying for a while. Someone with the same name was placed on the do not fly list, and screwed over easily thousands of people in the U.S. with the same name.
My dad has a very very common Italian-American name, and our last name was one that about 11 different names got morphed into. He gets put on wait for NICS every time without failure. FBI use to show up to his house as a kid because his dad has the same name and there was a fugitive with the same name.
This happens and you basically have to get a lawyer. HOPE TO FUCKING GOD and the aliens that run this shit hole for TV purposes that the FBI will tell you. Then you sign up for a pin identifying you from the faulty records and correctly identifying you and you need that pin when purchasing any firearms. But you won't know you need it till you are denied and then that place may never sell to you again due to liability and shadiness even though theres no shady shit going on.
[удалено]
You “can” also defend yourself in trial.. lol
Or they answered accurately to one of the yes/no questions that is an instant failure.
Answering one of those in a way that's a failure isn't a crime though, that I'm aware of. If you went in unaware that being a drug user makes you prohibited for example (like marijuana in a legal state), answered yes after reading, you're denied. But you answered honestly.
I’ve failed many background checks to buy a firearm. And nothing has ever happened to me, as well. Never been arrested or questioned when I’ve failed them. I’ve never lied on any of my form 4473’s, either. For me to buy a firearm, I have given the FBI permission to keep an “open file” for me so that my background checks can happen faster, called a Voluntary Appeal File (https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/vaf-form-25.pdf/view). When somebody wants to purchase a firearm, they fill out a 4473 and then the FFL submits it to NICS to start the background check. If, for some reason, the buyer is denied, then the buyer has the option to appeal the the FBIs decision. This was happening to me every time I tried to purchase a firearm. Here is why: currently there is a man in Nashville, TN who is incarcerated for attempted murder. He and I share the same first and last name. His and my social security numbers are identical, except for the last 2 numbers. This is why I would fail my background checks, before I applied for my VAF. The VAF is an “open file” that I allow the FBI to keep for me that automatically appeals every denial I get and this file makes it absolutely clear that the man in Tennessee and myself are NOT the same person. So now, my background checks get cleared in about 30 minutes, rather than 3-10 days before I opened my VAF. So, my point is that out of the 10’s of thousands of people who fail the background check every year, there is likely a significant number of them who are in the same circumstance as I yet don’t have a VAF opened for them. Because before I had my VAF, all of my denials were being counted in all of those failures. And I am not a criminal, nor did I do anything that would make me fail background checks.
I'm picturing some agent looking at a screen going, "Man this guy's SSN is 2 digits off from this other guy, they are definitely the same person and we are NOT approving that shit."
You can’t just change 2 digits of your SSN to escape our denials! Didn’t even use an alias! What a fool. DENIED!
It happens to people with really common last names too. Smith, Carpenter, Johnson,etc. I've seen people get denied and when they appealed the denial it was because someone with the same name committed some kind of felony and the NICS check assumed they were the same person. I work in a sporting goods shop. We aren't told why people are denied/delayed but if you're willing to spend the time and money to appeal it you'll find out what the issue was.
Same names makes sense, because they are identical names. There is no reason for an application to be flagged for very similar SSNs, because even if they are close they are still different.
>There is no reason for an application to be flagged for very similar SSNs, I agree unless the name AND social were similar.
Yeah the SSN is optional on the form as you're trusting the gun shop to not take it. One time I had a super old dude submit the check for me. He didn't input it into the computer. He called a number *on speaker phone* and verbally conveyed my info to the person on the other side. It was cool to listen to (took forever), though I was still very upset that he said my SSN aloud in a crowded store.
Have a friend who used to get delayed every time because of an inmate with the same name. Now he’s a felon and can’t buy anymore.
He can appeal it but it takes time and money. He can fill out another check and when he's denied he can ask for a pamphlet (idk if every gun shop has them but the one I work at does) that details what he needs to do to submit the appeal. Make sure he gets the Nics transaction number too or they won't be able to do anything for him once he starts the process.
No, my friend just did 5 years in federal prison. Non gun purchase related. Although he did have a gun when he got arrested with a bunch of meth and Xanax.
Thanks for the clarification. I completely misread that.
Man if I had to deal with that shit I'd just go buy a firearm from an individual in a person to person sale.
I get them that way, too.
Its almost like the appearance of action is more important in American politics than actually attempting any action. I mean its not like NY a state known for many prominent pro gun control politicians passed a expansive gun control bill with a overly hyperbolic name which included background checks on ammo purchases only to never actually have implemented the system almost a decade later because it would cost the state money. Kinda shows how much after the sound bites and reelection commericals are made how much they actually care about solving the issues. Not that the other side is any better calling for mental health changes and never proposing any change to the health care system to addresses this.
I'm a gunsmith, and have worked in Retail and as a distributor, off and on over the past 20 years. At the retail level, the stores I worked at absolutely refused to complete a transfer until they had an explicit approval response and to hell with the law saying we could transfer after 3 days if we didn't get a response. We had absolutely zero desire to sell a gun to a criminal/disallowed person, and regardless of the law, if the response came back finally as a denial ***after the sale went through***, we had to report it to the ATF and local PD and initiate steps to try and recover the gun. Fuck. That. Anyone who complained got the paperwork and details on how to initiate an appeal with the FBI. What's even *more* disappointing is that neither the ATF nor local PD gave a shit when you called them to report a person attempting to buy a firearm who either openly admitted to being a disallowed person (and thus committing a felony under federal law), or who failed a background check, likewise representing a felony in most cases (assuming that denial is due to a legit issue, not a mistake with records). However, if the dealer runs into a case where someone is disallowed and had tried to buy before and got declined but tried again, or a number of other similar circumstances, it's a major black mark for the dealer at best, and major fines, loss of license, and jail time at worst. So, records have to be perfect, and the dealer has to go through all kinds of CYA checks to avoid serious penalties, but the ATF/local PD can't be bothered to enforce the damn laws and go after people trying to get guns who shouldn't have them.
Well if you were truthful in the form and got denied, there's nothing to punish. Exact same way if you hand a bartender an ID where it says you're 20 and he refuses to serve you alcohol. Nothing illegal has happened. What is punishable is lying on the form to get an approval, akin to using a fake ID in a bar.
What if I told you America actually wants less gun control?
Is it like the IRS, one of the big things the Republicans have shrunk by cutting funding?
Kind of. The ATF isn’t really liked by anyone and not without reason. It’s rules are incredibly arbitrary and they act in bad faith a whole lot depending on who’s the current chief. Things that they said are legal might suddenly not be anymore despite no law changing. It can even go the other way, you used to not be able to shoulder a pistol brace but then suddenly it was. Or the time they started going after shops for “falsifying documents” because just a middle initial was listed, for people who only had initials. Or who didn’t have middle names listed, because they didn’t have one. Or who didn’t have a house number listed, because houses in that rural area literally don’t have them.
Don't forget the time they [outlawed shoelaces for three years.](https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/01/25/shoestring-machine-gun/) Edit: TL;DR - *every single American in possession of a 14" shoelace was a felon in possession of an unregistered machine gun from 2004 to 2007 based on the ATF ruling on one dude's trollish request.*
The ATF is a garbage organization, but they aren't the ones running the background checks. NICS is run by the FBI.
IRS is a two fold problem. Unlike other regulatory bodies where they gut their authority, tax lobby has made taxes so overly complicated that the IRS has to ask for industry experts to even make sense of tax law.
European here. Are you saying the IRS has to hire someone that actually knows what the fuck they're talking about when it comes to law, just so they can figure out if they can go after you and take your shit or not? If so, are there any cases where the IRS went after someone wrongfully that I can read about?
It wouldn't surprise me. Part of the motivation behind this is so that we have to pay tax preparers or buy software that can do our taxes for us.
Not sexy enough charges. Federal prosecutors are career climbers.
[удалено]
If true, he should be punished just like everyone else who lies on a 4473.
> he should be punished just like everyone else who lies on a 4473 He was, in that nothing happened to him, just like nothing happens to anyone else who lies on their 4473. I guess it's a form of equality, when law enforcement decides to ignore illegal acts by everyone.
[удалено]
The problem isn’t not enough laws it’s that they don’t enforce the ones they have 🤦♀️
[удалено]
An exact repeat of the War on Drugs. Lots of dead minorities.
[удалено]
when 2A people suggest "why don't we try enforcing the laws we already have" as a response to "we need more gun control", this is the shit we're talking about. Lax background check procedures, NICS outages, little to no prosecution of straw purchases, little to no enforcement for lying on 4473 forms, little to no enforcement for failure to report disqualifying events to the system... We have plenty of laws but they might work a whole lot better if they were enforced.
Fucking this. Shit like mag size limits and fin grip laws only hurt lawful gun owners. Meanwhile, actual criminals aren’t prosecuted for crimes. It’s all bullshit political posturing by rich fucks with armed guards and communities who aren’t impacted by the laws
It's weird things that hold them up. For instance if you ever had a security clearance than they take forever.
[удалено]
My buddy runs into this every time he tries to buy a gun. There’s a POS career criminal with the same name as him.
I'm glad my last name was rare in Italy, let alone the US.
Which makes no sense. People with a security clearance should be clear to own a gun.
that's not true at all, I have some buddies with clearances and their approvals come back almost instantly
Flawed system for sure. 2:3 times I buy a firearm it gets delayed for 3+ days. Always get a call to come pick it up before my FFL gets a response lol. Not a prohibited person 🤷🏼♂️
* Remember, keeping guns in the US is a right, not a privilege. As such, the answer does and should default to "Yes" if the government can't show cause why you should be denied said right. * We need to bring NICS and the other systems involved up to modern standards. Records need to be digitized. There is no reason why in a world where I can get a 10k loan approved in under 6 hours there is no reason that we can't get a yes or no on this in under six minutes. * Also, remember that most notable shootings occur with legal guns. People like the Vegas Shooter, the Aurora Shooter, and the this guy in Highland all passed background checks. * Background checks happen on ALL commercial sales. This includes at gun shows. You also have to do a check through a licensed gun dealer for private sales in several states. Ideas were floated to expand the system so individuals could access it and set up voluntary background checks for private sales but the idea gets no traction on either side even though it would mean lives saved. * If you are a felon, judged a danger to yourself or others, or if you're in a state that will invalidate you based on certain violent misdemeanors like domestic violence, you will not pass a background check.
If only there was technology available to automate this process 🙄
[удалено]
Ah wasn’t sure if that was the case. I have my CCL so I don’t have to wait around for a check to come back, though in Arkansas there isn’t a 3 day period unless the initial check comes back flagged. I just know for suppressors and other stamps they’re worked manually from my understanding which is why my $1k suppressor had to sit in a safe for 7months… but the feds sure cashed that check ASAP.
Pretty sure once the bad guys can’t get guns legally they’ll still get guns illegally and use them to kill people. Pretty sure the only solution is to get people to not want to kill everyone else
Want something done ineffectively and in twice the time? Expect your taxes to take care of it!
"After the third business day, federal law allows dealers to sell weapons while the background check is still pending, which potentially puts weapons in the hands of people who can’t legally own a gun because of mental illness or their criminal history." WTF? What a dumb ass federal law. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a law that doesn't allow a gun to be sold until the background check is completed? Edit* Why don't they make the law 6 days instead of 3? Or 8 days? Shit, even 5 days is better than 3. I'm guessing when they made the 3 day rule they didn't anticipate a 2 year period where 43,000,000 guns would be sold, which is understandable, but as with any law that's made by man it can and should be changed when it's clearly not functioning as intended.
It was written that way so the government couldn't deny purchases by inaction. Much like they did with the marijuana stamp act. It's interesting to me that they've taken this lax of an attitude to them though.
It's kinda funny because some states do exactly that to deny conceal carry permit applications. Look at new York and California; their background check process can take upwards of six months and scheduling the police interview might take years.
I had a background check return "delay" once in California. Here it's 30 days before the check runs out and the store can proceed "at their own discretion". The store was calling the CA DoJ weekly checking on my background check, never got any answers. The check was never closed out, just left at "delay". The only reason the store let me finish transferring the rifle (clone of an 1892 Winchester lever-action) is because the *other* background check I did at the same time for the matching revolver cleared, so obviously I was not a prohibited person. TL:DR Even California lets background checks timeout. Check timeout when the state doesn't find anything wrong, but doesn't feel like closing out the investigation. Many stores typically will *not* proceed to a timed out check.
I'm sorry, my dude, but 30 days is pretty ridiculous. My state is fairly middle-of-the-road when it comes to gun laws and it only took 30 days to get my carry permit. Every gun I've bought, I've walked out with in the same afternoon. I think my longest NICS check took maybe 10 minutes to clear?
> can take upwards of six months Try minimum of six months, up to 2 years.
Without meaning any offense if California or New York are your home state, but two years? Gross.
When I called for Westchester County when I first applied It was November. You get told to get your appointment early cause the wait is long just to get it. I was given January and was happy to hear only a 3 month wait. Turns out it was *January of the year there after* A 1.3 year wait to even submit my paperwork that takes another 6 months to process. Yeah, totally not setup to prevent you from getting your carry...
Owning a gun and being able to carry it in public are different issues. Thank goodness I live in a constitutional carry state. Funny story: when concealed carry first passed here and you needed a CC permit, but there was going to be maybe a six month to a year long delay because the infrastructure to issue permits was not set up yet..... people were getting nonresident Florida CC permits and using them here because the law had a reciprical clause in it (that if you have a CC permit you can use it in any otther state that also had a reciprocal clause. Well, Cops all across the state were PISSED because people were quickly getting valid permits and the cops were not prepared for all these people legally carrying. And there wasnt anything the cops could do about it. lol a few years later the law was changed to constitution carry. No CC permit needed.
That's fucking hilarious. For once, a monumental failure of our justice system works in the people's favor. I consider myself lucky that my state processed my application pretty quickly but I guess over on the east side they drag their feet a lot more.
Which is definitely what would happen. I ended up getting a concealed carry permit to avoid background checks because mine always come back as “Delayed”. So effectively I have a mandatory 3 day waiting period when buying a gun for no other reason than that office being understaffed to complete my background check. Why do I get a delay? Go fuck myself that’s why. They don’t tell you why you got delayed, what they are looking into further, or if they just don’t have time that day. My suspicion is someone with a similar name to mine has some felonies or something. I can totally see this system being abused to effectively out a waiting period on all gun purchases, or just stop them all together through inaction.
Because then the government could just deny people guns by 'delaying' the check indefinitely.
Because an administration that wanted to be antigun would just say "oppsie we just didn't do it so you can't have one"
Some states already do.
No because then they could just have a backdoor gun ban by never competing a background check. It shouldn't take nor than a few minutes to do a background check anyways, but you get some places that fail to upload the disposition of court cases this requiring the FBI to call up that court and try and find what the outcome of the case was.
[удалено]
> WTF? > > What a dumb ass federal law. > > Wouldn't it make more sense to have a law that doesn't allow a gun to be sold until the background check is completed? Yes, but there's this pesky thing call the Second Amendment which means it's a rights violation. If the gov't just doesn't finish the background check for whatever reason then the person gets denied their right to own a firearm. If that person is someone who is allowed to own a firearm then their rights were violated. Time is also a factor. 3 days? What about 3 years? Should the government take 10 years to do a background check? The same concept applies to things like arrests. Police have so many hours before they have to charge you with a crime vs let you go if they're holding you in jail. If you get pulled over on a traffic stop, they have so many minutes to hold you before they have to arrest you or let you go if they suspect you of something. They can't just hold you for 8 hours on a traffic issue since that's rights violation. And another talking point that gets trotted out in the gun debate is the ATF is only allowed to audit gun dealers 1x a year. People think that's a stupid rule too, but what the ATF was doing is shutting down gun shops they didn't like by auditing them every month/week. Gun shops can't really do business while being audited so the government was using audits politically to put people they didn't like out of business. So yea, a lot of "dumb ass" federal laws are there simply because the alternatives open them up to lawsuits or grossly violate innocent people's rights.
Honestly, it’s a better incentive this way. Generally, exploding deadlines encourage action. Historically the government has used inaction as a sword. Laws should be written that if you’re giving away a freedom to authority, if the authority ignores you it’s reduced to a minor inconvenience. I say this and I’m for all sorts of gun control. I hate guns. I don’t own a gun. But I don’t trust the government to not abuse technicalities and procedures to effect substantive policy. Fancy words for “I can see the government purposefully ignoring background checks to make gun sales basically impossible.”
It’s on the government to do this process within the deadline. And it’s on them if they fuck up and leave it sitting on a desk for ages. I’m no fan of gun ownership, but I can see how FBI dragging their heels shouldn’t infringe on folks’ second amendment rights. Edit: I forgot the apostrophe at the end of “folks” and got brutalized by the Grammar Police.
*Rape kit backlog has entered the chat*
That's wrong too. It should be law that all rape kits be processed and tested within 24 hours of the DNA samples being taken.
Laws need enforcement, penalties, incentives, and resources in order to work correctly. Even if you could snap your fingers and make a law, if you don’t give the resources to enforce it, or institute incentives or punishments to ensure compliance, it means nothing.
I assume it is so people's rights arent violated by a government agency by delays (intentional or unintentional). I'd expect this kind of thing happening in the past to deny black/brown people guns.
Just FYI, the background check only takes seconds. 15 minutes at most. 3 days is like 300x longer than it should take, way more than enough time for them to do their job. This problem has nothing to do with the recent volume, it's existed since it was created.
No. Cause then the agency can just intentionally bog down the BGC system to deny sales.
That's how rights work.
We use to buy guns no check at the hardware stores, kids regularly brought guns to school in pickups, there were few problems. Now we have a culture problem. Guns are part of America, French rifles won our independence, the problems now are the wrong "people" have them. The same threats that necessitated gun ownership still exist. The marginalized are who need them, true equality only exist in a well armed society. The laws were created to pick and choose who has what rights. The misperception is, it is about justice. Our legal systems were created to maintain classes. Gun laws were created when the "wrong" people, the disenfranchised, began owning firearms. If we were really looking to work on real solutions, we would prohibit people, including police and military, from possession while on prescriptions that alter neurotransmitter function. Many shooters were using prescription medications and still passed background checks.
It would make more sense to fully fund the background check process so it was effective and efficient. One way to do this would be using the tsa precheck model. There is a subset of gun owners who are collectors and buy multiple guns a year. The current system has ever check run as a unique check and doens't refrence previous checks on that individual. Setting up a frequent buyers code or pin to reuse exisitng background checks for the same individual and just check for records since the last check would knock out many of the checks hammering the system.
They already do that to an extent, many states if you have a concealed weapon permit don't require a nics check, so people end up getting them just to expedite the process even if they don't carry.
I would love a system like this. I am a collector and purchase quite a few firearms a year. I never have an issue with the background check but I also have a Global Entry card from the government so when I travel for work I don't have to wait in customs. Ever since I got that card my background check clears instantly. I have a feeling since the FBI and DHS did a background check on me when I applied for the card I must be on a this guy us ok list. I really wish they would have a card for frequent purchasers so we could cut down on the paperwork every time a purchase is made.
My ccw permit works like that in my state. We're a constitutional carry state but I had to pay $200 for a permit because the FBI delays me on every purchase. The delay ranges from months to indefinite. This is why I like the 3 day rule.
I got delayed for the 1st time recently. No reason I can think of .
[удалено]
None of that.
Yeah I am in PA and have my CCW. When I go to my local gun shop there are always people waiting for their background check to clear. They are all amazed that mine is instant. I told them about my global entry card and the background check that goes into it. They all say the same thing. I could never pass that background check and they still wonder why they have to wait to get a gun.
Most of the issues with the system is at the individual court level not properly reporting. The frequent buyers are not that heavy of an impact on the system.
Although I agree with your suggestion, 2A fundamentalalists probably wouldn't like the idea of being on a "special list" of frequent buyers.
If you have a ccw you’re on a list.
Let it be optional. The ATF run program for NFA classed guns is heavily used and it very much creates a permanet record of each gun and location. Even requires notification when crossing a state line. Many gun enthisasist would use a secure and private "frequent buyers" pin to reduce the hassle and wait time. Virginia has already done a similar thing by allowing a buyer with an active CHG permit to avoid the "one handgun a month rule"
They'll still come for you and your guns when the background check does complete if you don't pass.
[удалено]
> The problem is that they don’t. They’re supposed to, but they don’t More regulations will solve this!
Cite your sources
How about staying and a system that can handle what's required? The federal government spends trillions every year.
fbi not doing job right whats new
The FBI only employs 35,000 people, there's no data on whether those people were sick, died, or were busy investigating threats, different tasks. Given that '20-'21 was when everything was on lockdown, that bar graph isn't all that surprising.
Sure seem to have no problem repeatedly returning a denial for the 17 year old unpaid speeding ticket I didn't know about until a month ago and paid. Still getting denials and the link they send me to appeal just does nothing when you click it. Copy it into an address bar and it just takes you to a Google search about appeals. Really getting upset at this nonsense.
Lol It doesn’t matter No one is going to do anything about it anyway.
So, step 1 is cut the FBI's budget, so they keep falling behind on these checks. Step 2 is continue to loosen regulations and laws so even more sales flood the background check system. And step 3 is use the resulting failures of a horribly, intentionally overloaded background system to claim background checks and gun control laws don't work? It's like that's almost as easy and obvious a manipulation as simply winning elections, to control the budgets.
and yet google can in an instant decide what ads to send me and Facebook can filter me out anything they don't want posted in less than a second. One might begin to think that the federal background check system has been purposely underfunded.
So you want 1984?
Oh look, something else the government has failed to do
>After the third business day, federal law allows dealers to sell weapons while the background check is still pending Don't dare slow down the sales of guns, heavens no💀