How Quickly Can You Buy a Gun?
Posted Thursday, Oct. 19, 2000, at 6:24 PM ETGeorge W. Bush said in the last presidential debate that he was for "instant background checks at gun shows" while Al Gore said he was for a "three-day waiting period." What are the laws about buying guns?
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StumbleUponThere is no federal law today mandating a waiting period for purchasing a gun from a licensed dealer. The five-day waiting period that was required by the 1993 Brady law expired in 1998. (Several states, however, have their own waiting periods.) It was replaced by an instant background check system run by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. About 95 percent of checks are completed within minutes or hours, but if a red flag appears--anything from confusion over a common name to a criminal conviction--the FBI has three working days to complete the check. Guns are prohibited from being sold to anyone who has a felony conviction, a dishonorable discharge from the military, a court adjudication of mental illness, or a domestic-violence restraining order or misdemeanor conviction. Since the Brady law, half a million would-be buyers have been refused.
Last year Gore cast a tie-breaking vote to pass Senate legislation, which would have closed a gun-show loophole. At gun shows, usually held over a weekend, licensed dealers are required to run instant checks, but private collectors selling guns are not. This new law would have made all sales at shows subject to the check. A House version of the bill would have shortened the three-day investigation period to 24 hours for any gun-show sale. Congress is not expected to pass either version. Gore also supports reinstatement of a required waiting period, in this case three days, before a gun purchase can be completed. That also has no chance of being passed into law this session.
Next question?
Explainer thanks Nancy Hwa and Naomi Paiss of Handgun Control.
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Reader Comments from The Fray:
The Explainer gave a pretty good explanation of how the system is supposed to work, but forgot to mention a couple of very critical details:
First, the background check system is frequently shut down for "system maintenance" and "software upgrades", usually over the weekend. This two to three day delay is not included in the FBI's statistics for how long the approval process takes on average, because the FBI doesn't start the clock ticking until they have accepted the request for a background check; if it takes three days to get them to answer the phone, and then they respond in five minutes, the FBI counts that as a five-minute check, not a three-day delay. Nor are these shutdowns included in the FBI's statistics on the percentage of time the system is available, which talks only about "unplanned" shutdowns, not the shutdowns they schedule in advance, but don't bother to inform the dealers about.
Needless to say, (but I'll say it anyway!) these shutdowns aren't actually necessary; when was the last time you heard of the air traffic control system being shut down for days at a time for system maintenance? They're a form of deliberate harassment, or at the very least evidence that the people running the system couldn't care less if they shut down an entire industry for days at a time.
Second: Although dealers are legally entitled to go ahead with sales after the FBI has failed to respond in three days, the BATF has mailed out letters to all the dealers, ordering them not to make such sales. Since the BATF has a record of breaking into the homes of dealers who've annoyed them, and shooting them dead if they accidentally twitch, most dealers will refuse to make these legal sales, saying that the business just isn't worth the risk of getting killed by government storm troopers.
--Brett Bellmore
(To reply, click here.)
I wrote in The Fray that I was disappointed in Explainer for only talking to Handgun Control. But Explainer has explained to me (heh) that she did indeed speak to the NRA, but that the specific spokesperson did not want to be named. So my worry about "Explainer bias" is groundless. I am no longer disappointed.
--Ananda Gupta
(To reply, click here.)
(10/20)