While the addition of 70 analysts to it’s background check processing system is it’s latest step to cover the issue, the FBI has been working on the problem since November. Unprecedented Black Friday sales of firearms caused the agency to cancel it’s employees’ annual leave so as to stay on top of the thousands of gun appeals. Some are worried that this affair will be cynically used as evidence that the government needs to pass even more anti-gun measures, and not without good cause.
“Since before Thanksgiving weekend, all annual leave for the more than 400 employees of the bureau’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System has been canceled. That Black Friday, the system was swamped with 185,345 background check requests on new firearm sales, a new single-day record. Morris said temporary background check examiners also are being pulled from internal construction projects and bureau divisions that oversee the gathering of crime statistics across the nation.
The near-constant frenzy of activity within the FBI’s sprawling complex, four hours away from the nation’s capital, may represent the most compelling argument in favor of at least part of President Obama’s recent executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence: the addition of 230 examiners to the NICS operation and 200 more agents for nation’s chief gun enforcement agency, the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms.
The new positions are desperately needed, authorities said, to support the seriously stressed NICS system and to prepare for an even heavier workload as a consequence of the central provision of the administration’s executive actions. That directive would require an increasing number of private firearms dealers to be licensed, subjecting their customers to scrutiny under the federal background check system.
Some of the administration’s most vocal opponents on gun policy, including those who offered initial skepticism or outright opposition when the executive actions were unveiled earlier this month, now appear open to potentially adding the hundreds of requested positions that would require congressional approval.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, acknowledged in a written statement to USA TODAY that more NICS examiners ‘might be necessary.'”
See video of President Obama announcing the government’s new policy of not reviewing background check appeals.
Source: USAToday
We shouldn’t have to be approved to buy a gun!
get what you need now!
Right I don’t think so!
Never!!!!!
Why punish law abiding citizens??? Obamas own feds have lost track of thousands of guns for which they were responsible. Take away their permits to own and carry guns.