Background Checks Limiting Gun Sales

Background checks blocked 204,000 of the more than 8.6 million prospective gun sales last year, according to a Justice Department report that shows state and local police rejected a higher percentage of would-be gun buyers than the FBI. The 1999 figures brought the number of purchase rejections since the Brady Act instituted background checks in February 1994 to 536,000 out of almost 22.3 million applications, the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reported. The bureau’s report provided the first hard numbers on the differences between checks by state and local police and those by the FBI. The FBI performed 4.5 million of the 8.6 million last year, compared with 4.1 million by state and local agencies. The rejection rate among state and local agencies was 3%, compared with 1.8% for the FBI. The report attributed this difference to state agencies’ access to more detailed criminal history records than the FBI’s. In 1999, 73% of rejections were because would-be buyers had been convicted of or indicted on felony charges.