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The FBI didn’t finish over 1 million gun background checks in time to stop a sale in 2020 and 2021
There were over 1 million opportunities for someone to buy a gun from a licensed dealer without a completed background check in 2020 and 2021, according to an F
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There were over 1 million opportunities for someone to buy a gun from a licensed dealer without a completed background check in 2020 and 2021, according to an FBI report released last month.
In all, 1,002,274 background checks — or 4.2 percent — took longer than three business days in 2020 and 2021, a higher share than any other period since at least 2014, according to data compiled by NBC News. 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.
Gun background checks slowed even more during the pandemic
In 2020 and 2021, a larger share of federal gun background checks took longer than three business days — potentially letting people who cannot legally own guns buy them from licensed dealers.
The FBI ultimately completed about one-fourth of those delayed background checks and discovered that 11,564 people were able to buy guns in 2020 and 2021 before the check showed that they should not have been allowed to do so, according to the FBI report. Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives then had to retrieve the weapons.
But that number only accounts for a fraction of the delayed background checks. The FBI never completed 734,604 checks from January 2020 through November 2021, the most recent data available, because they took longer than 88 days — after which the bureau must stop its research and purge the unfinished checks from its system.
The FBI fails to complete hundreds of thousands of gun background checks each year
The number of gun background checks the FBI never completes because of delays and incomplete records rose sharply during the pandemic, even when accounting for incomplete data in 2021.
Some dealers choose not to sell weapons without a completed check, and many states also have more stringent requirements.
Still, it’s impossible to know how many people who bought guns after an unfinished background check would have been denied had it been completed.
“Every gun sold without a completed background check poses a potential risk,” said Rob Wilcox, federal legal director for the gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. “And these staggering numbers show that we have a serious problem.”