Everything You Need to Know About Federal Background Checks

The Trace

A step-by-step guide to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which vets anyone who attempts to buy a gun through a federally licensed firearms dealer.

      "In the United States, anybody who wants to buy a gun from a federally licensed firearms dealer (FFL) is subject to a background check. Since 1998, when the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, went online, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has processed more than 273 million of them.

     "The overwhelming majority of gun background checks take just minutes to clear the would-be buyer. Only 2 percent result in a rejection because of a disqualifying record in the shopper’s personal history.

     "And then there are the people who slip through the cracks and obtain guns they should have been barred from possessing — sometimes with deadly consequences. The gunmen in the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting, Charleston, South Carolina, church massacre, and Virginia Tech rampage each had a history that banned them from owning firearms. Yet none were stopped, because of omissions and loopholes in the system.

     "It’s such cases that expose the hidden complexities of NICS, and the importance of each element functioning the way that it should.

     "Given the central role that background checks play in balancing individual Americans’ gun rights and our shared public safety, it’s worth investing a few minutes to understand how they work." . . .  Full article

The 12 Reasons Why Americans Fail Federal Gun Background Checks

"More than 2 million people have been blocked from buying a gun after failing federal background checks since 1998. But some reasons for denial are more common than others."

 . . . 8. Adjudicated Mental Health: 31,854

Disqualifying mental health records form the second-largest body of records held by the NICS Indices. Simply receiving a diagnosis of a severe mental illness like schizophrenia is not enough to bar an American from gun ownership  — a judge must legally declare a person mentally unfit to own a gun or involuntarily commit him or her to a mental institution.