The Illegal Alien NICS Alert Act

By Alex Madajian

Broken FBI Background Check System Disproportionately Effects Minorities
Why does the FBI’s background check system falsely deny law-abiding citizens from purchasing a firearm the overwhelming majority of the time? Because the system is broken and often mismatches law-abiding citizens with the records of convicted felons who share things like names and birthdays. This disproportionately affects minorities, such as Blacks and Hispanics, who are statistically more likely to share names and therefore are more likely to get a false positive.i
According to published FBI data, NICS has denied 44,223 prospective gun purchasers between November 30, 1998 and December 31, 2022 for being “Illegal/Unlawful Alien[s]” under 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5).ii While a proponent of the bill may say these are prohibited persons who were stopped from illegally purchasing a firearm, in reality these are “initial denials”—over 90% of which are false positives.iii This means that 9 out of 10 times these denials were almost certain law-abiding Americans. Gun purchasers who are falsely denied a background check are not dangerous or able to be prosecuted, which is why only a few dozen cases are even prosecuted by the Department of Justice each year.iv In fact, DOJ deems these cases “not appealing to judges and juries from

Source: Gun Owners of America