Gun Control

This report provides information on the effectiveness of the Brady Act's phase I (interim Brady) and phase II (permanent Brady) provisions in preventing the sale of firearms to prohibited persons, such as criminals or illegal aliens. Under interim Brady, which went into effect in 1994 and applied only to handguns, background checks were generally to be done by the chief law enforcement officer in the purchaser's residence community. During phase I, handguns were not to be transferred for five business days (a waiting period) unless the dealer received approval from the applicable state or local chief law enforcement officer before that time. Under permanent Brady, background checks generally are to be done using a computerized system.

GAO noted that: (1) under both interim and permanent Brady, access to automated criminal history records has been essentially the same; (2) under interim Brady, state or local chief law enforcement officers in some jurisdictions accessed information on some of the disqualifiers (such as mental health records and court restraining orders) that may not be available for background checks conducted by the FBI under permanent Brady; (3) however, under permanent Brady, the NICS Index database now provides automated access to some information on the nonfelony, noncriminal Brady disqualifiers that was not available under interim Brady--that is, information about persons who have been unlawful drug users or addicts, who have been adjudicated or involuntarily committed as mentally defective, who are illegal or unlawful aliens, who have been dishonorably discharged from the military, or who have renounced their U.S. citizenship; (4) although the NICS expanded the amount of disqualifying information centrally available for firearms background checks, the database does not contain all relevant records, most notably federal and state records on unlawful drug users and mental defectives; (5) the FBI has a process for contacting federal and state agencies to obtain this information; (6) under permanent Brady, state agencies generally are better positioned than the FBI to conduct background checks; (7) in addition, state agencies may be better able to interpret their own state firearms purchase and possession laws, resulting in a more efficient and effective background check process; (8) default proceed transactions involving prohibited persons who purchased firearms totalled 2,519 during the first 10 months of permanent Brady; (9) these transactions involved the transfer of firearms to persons who the FBI later determined to be prohibited from receiving firearms; (10) according to FBI officials, these default proceeds occurred primarily because many states' automated criminal history records did not show the dispositions of felony arrests, and efforts to obtain such information took longer than 3 business days; and (11) FBI data for these transfers indicated that an average of 25 business days elapsed between the initial NICS inquiry and the date the FBI initiated retrieval of the firearms.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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