The figures reflect a continued decline in the denial rate from 2.4 percent of applicants in 1999. Government officials attributed this decline to an increased reluctance among potentially disqualified purchasers to be subjected to the background checks required by the Brady Act. In other words, criminals fear the Brady Act, according to the FBI. The latest version of the Brady Act background checks encompass an immediate review of many more records from a larger variety of databases.
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act requires criminal history background checks on people who apply to buy any type of firearm from federally licensed dealers.
The Federal Gun Control Act, 18 U.S.C. § 922, prohibits the transfer of a firearm to certain persons.
In addition, the statute makes it unlawful for any licensed importer, manufacturer, dealer or collector to transfer a long gun to a person younger than 18 years old or any other type of firearm to a person less than 21 years old.
Since February 29, 1994, when the Brady Act went into effect, through December 31, 2003, more than 53 million applications were checked and approximately 1,102,000 were blocked.
During 2003 half of the denials were made by state and local agencies and half by the FBI.
From 1999 through 2003, 58 percent of the denials by state and local agencies were for the applicant's felony conviction or indictment, 13 percent for a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction or restraining order, and the remainder for other reasons.
However, 2003 data show that for both state checks and FBI-administered checks, the percentage of application denials for reasons other than a felony conviction history has been growing. For the first time, more than half of all applicants were denied for a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction, for being the subject of a protection order, for a history of mental illness or for another reason. Presale firearm checks entail a search of more than 53 million records held in 14 separate national databases.
About 15 percent of the 790,000 applicants rejected since the Brady Act's full provisions took effect in 1999 appealed their denials. Of these, 35.5 percent have had their denials reversed. This is a denial error rate of approximately 0.1 percent of the 40.8 million checks conducted during that period. At the same time, about 7,200 arrests and 20,000 retrievals from improperly cleared purchasers took place -an error rate of less than 0.1 percent for improperly cleared individuals.
[Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics]
