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MORE THAN HALF A MILLION ILLEGAL GUN PURCHASES STOPPED

WASHINGTON, DC - More than 500,000 attempted gun purchases by felons, fugitives, domestic violence abusers, and other prohibited persons have been stopped since the implementation of Brady Act background checks in 1994, the Justice Department announced today.

The latest estimates from the FBI show that since the beginning of this year, 27,862 gun purchases by prohibited buyers have been denied, bringing the total number of sales stopped to more than half a million. These 27,862 denials are in addition to the 179,000 illegal purchases stopped by the National Instant Check System (NICS) during its first thirteen months of operation and the 312,000 who were stopped under the Brady Act's interim provisions.

NICS allows the FBI and its partners in state and local law enforcement to perform instant searches of over 35 million records to determine if a purchaser is prohibited from buying a gun. NICS blocks criminal purchases efficiently by checking these records before the sale of a gun by a federally-licensed gun dealer takes place.

Most NICS checks take only seconds to complete. During NICS's first year, the FBI cleared 72 percent of prospective gun buyers within 30 seconds of the dealer's request for the check, allowing most gun buyers to receive their gun with no wait. Even when a transfer was delayed because a check revealed potentially disqualifying information, the FBI provided a response within 2 hours for 95 percent of prospective buyers. The other 5 percent of prospective gun buyers had records in the NICS that required law enforcement to spend additional time checking. Data from the first year of operation demonstrates that a purchaser whose NICS check takes more than 24 hours to complete is almost 20 times more likely to be determined to be a prohibited person than other gun buyers.

The FBI develops its estimates by doubling the actual number of denials issued by the FBI. This conservative estimate assumes that the 26 states that perform their own checks through NICS deny sales at rates consistent with FBI's denial rate. NICS is a partnership between federal and state law enforcement authorities. Twenty-six states have agreed to participate in NICS by designating state points of contact (POCs) for some or all background checks.

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