- Mental health records can prevent someone from legally purchasing a firearm
- New Hampshire, Montana, and Wyoming are the three states that do not report to the system
- Militant groups defending gun rights have fought state action alongside mental health advocates
Federal officials say the FBI’s database of people prohibited from buying firearms works only if it contains “complete, accurate, and timely information.”
Mental health records are the main slit in the system. But three states – New Hampshire, Montana and Wyoming – still refused to provide it.
While US senators have been reading about gun reform initiatives, many Republicans like Senator John Cornyn of Texas have repeatedly pointed to legislation that prevents people with criminal records or mental health challenges from obtaining firearms.
Cornyn backed a 2018 bill that sought to bolster the FBI’s Immediate Criminal Examination System, or NICS, in the wake of the Texas church shooting that left 27 people dead. Among the dead was the gunman, an Air Force pilot, whose criminal records that would have prevented him from purchasing weapons were not submitted to the NICS.
“For years, agencies and states have not adhered to the law, and failed to upload these critical records without consequences,” Cornyn said while celebrating the “Fix NICS” solutions that pushed for faster and more accurate transmissions. “Just one recording that was not properly reported could lead to a tragedy.”
President Donald Trump signed the law, which pumped $615 million into states to plug loopholes and support reporting in the FBI system.
The states investigated significant progress reports in the database of 26 million records, including 6.9 million people who were discovered by a judge to be mentally ill.
Without state laws mandating participation, Montana and Wyoming submitted 36 and 17 mental health records, respectively. New Hampshire provided 657. By comparison, Hawaii—with the same population as New Hampshire—provided nearly 10,000 mental health records.
Records from government-run mental health facilities in the three states show that several hundred more people were forcibly committed – all of whom had to be submitted to the NICS.
History of this program
The national background check system was created as part of the Brady Gun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. Gun stores, pawn shops, and other licensed dealers across the country must use them when someone wants to purchase a firearm.
Prospective gun buyers must fill out a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives form certifying certain questions, and their names are then run through the FBI system.
The FBI says more than 300 million checks have been made over time, resulting in more than two million denials.
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Holes in the mental health reporting system gained attention in 2007 after the Virginia Tech shooting that killed 32 people. Two years earlier, the court found the student’s shooting “presents an imminent danger to himself or others” after he was accused of stalking two female classmates, leading to his temporary detention which should have disqualified him from purchasing firearms.
in time, only about half of states reported mental health records to the NICS. By 2012, that number had shrunk to about 19 states reporting fewer than 100 records and by 2014 it had dropped to eight. In 2016, it dropped to four until Alaska increased its reporting.
“We know that a background check is only as good as the records it contains, so efforts to improve the reporting of records in the NICS are essential to public safety,” said Kelly Dren, director of research at the Giffords Law Center, a firearms violence prevention group. “Research has shown that as states improve reporting of bans on mental health events in their background check system, we see a decrease in the risk of arrest for violent crime for banned individuals.”
The “Fix NICS” Act was written by Cornyn and Democratic Senator Chris Murphy Dubbed “baby step” by gun control advocates, but garnered the support of both major lobbyists, the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation continues to lobby in New Hampshire, Montana and Wyoming to toughen the reports.
“We are committed to ensuring that our background check system reflects the most accurate data available,” said Mark Oliva, a spokesperson for the foundation.
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Comrades strangers continue
Efforts to expand background checks to be “universal” – applicable to private sales – at the state and federal levels have failed. But gun rights lobbies and gun safety groups have coalesced around promoting the NICS.
Opposition to doing so has created some “strange companions,” said Susan Stearns, executive director of the New Hampshire chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
The Stearns group opposed a procedure in 2017 to report mental illness to the NICS, largely because it did not include a way out of the list.
Stearns said, “The Alliance’s position has always been: If they pose a danger to themselves or others, they should be denied access to lethal means, period.” “But you must not lose constitutional rights for the rest of your life.”
Stearns said people who suffer a mental health crisis often recover but can be permanently banned from participating in shooting and hunting games.
New Hampshire officials provide court records to anyone deemed ineligible to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, but not those who have been involuntarily bound to a health facility.
The coalition was lukewarm about a bill introduced by former state Democratic Senator Margie MacDonald in Montana as well, although her bill included a track that should be removed from the list after five years.
MacDonald in 2014 and again in 2019 tried to pass a bill requiring records. Ultimately, she said, Republican opposition fueled by hardline gun rights groups in the state scuttled her efforts.
“It’s frustrating, frightening and very dangerous,” she said.
MacDonald hosted the father of a Virginia Tech victim at a 2014 hearing in Helena, Montana. She also testified to the mother of a woman who was murdered in 2008 by a man who purchased a firearm just days after being forcibly placed in a mental hospital. He had lied on the ATF form, and answered “no” to whether he had been found to be suffering from mental illness.
Lying to the model can result in fines and up to 10 years in prison.
Data released to The Washington Post From the Department of Justice explains that cases tied to a lie on the form are extremely rare: 243 in fiscal year 2020, out of millions of checks.
In Wyoming, former Representative Sarah Burlingame, D-Cheyenne, sponsored an effort in 2019 to mandate mental health reports from the NICS that also failed. She said she encountered “first-class disinformation testimony” from groups such as Gun owners in Wyoming are supported by the Dor brothers.
Burlingame said Wyoming’s rating as the worst place for suicides per capita is reason enough to keep firearms away from people in crisis.
“This relates to older white men, who are isolated and have access to firearms,” Burlingame said. “If that doesn’t inspire people to create a culture that preserves our cultural right to firearms and moral obligations, then I don’t know what will.
“It’s common sense legislation that every other country understands.”
Nick Benzenstadler is a reporter for the USA TODAY investigative team. Contact him at npenz@usatoday.com or npenzenstadler, or at Signal at (720) 507 5273.