The gun control narrative goes that if only there were universal background checks (pretend NICS doesn’t exist for a moment), gun crimes and tragic mass shootings would be significantly reduced. Ready to hear something that will get your blood boiling?
As gun owners, we know that there are a number of background check hurdles to complete, depending on the state in which you live, to buy a firearm or to obtain a concealed carry permit, save for the rare person-to-person private sale.
It turns out that the state of Florida—the state in which the Parkland and Pulse Nightclub shootings occurred, which anti-2A activists have used as a rallying cry—has failed to perform national background checks for carry permits for more than a year. FOR MORE THAN A YEAR!
This story from the AP says the lapse occurred during a time period when there was a significant surge in the number of people seeking concealed carry permits, meaning thousands of applications were rubber stamped without background checks being performed.
The reports says the state failed to check the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) from February 2016 to March 2017.
According to this story from Yahoo.com, the blame falls on one state employee, Lisa Wilde, who was unable to log into the system and complete the background checks. Instead the concealed carry permits were blindly issued.
Wilde never attempted to mitigate the problem.
After an investigation by the state inspector general’s report revealed the lapse, the state ultimately revoked 291 permits and fired Wilde.
“The former employee was both deceitful and negligent, and we immediately launched an investigation and implemented safeguards to ensure this never happens again,” said Adam Putnam, the state Agriculture Commissioner Adams Putnam (R), in the story. Putnam is running for governor.
Many would say it should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.
This is more proof that the NICS system, which was launched in 1998 after the passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that mandated it, is a broken system and just another set of hoops for law abiding gun owners to jump through that often fails so spectacularly, it can hardly be called a functional safeguard.
The actual background checks are performed by the FBI, that is, if someone logs into the system and submits them.
The Tampa Bay Times interviewed Wilde, who told them she was working in the mailroom when, for some reason, she was given oversight of the database in 2013.
“I didn’t understand why I was put in charge of it,” Wilde said in the story, adding that she “dropped the ball.”
The AP reports that from the summer of 2015 to the summer of 2017, the number of new applications for CCW permits jumped to its highest level in 25 years.