LAW UNDER FIRE: GUN DEALERS SAY NEW REQUIREMENT CAUSES SALES DELAYS

Area gun dealers have had to contend with delays in sales and the potential loss of business because of a provision in a federal gun-control law that went into effect this week.

David Lange, owner of Shooters Gun Shop in Cape Girardeau, said he has lost a couple of sales this week because of delays caused by a provision of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act that went into effect Monday. In other cases, sales have been delayed up to seven hours while his store attempted to comply with the provision.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) was established as a result of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, commonly known as the Brady Act. The act, which became law on Nov. 30, 1993, requires background checks to be run on all people wanting to purchase a gun.

The provision that went into effect Monday, five years to the day the bill passed, requires gun dealers to run a background check through the FBI to insure that purchasers of guns are eligible by law to buy a gun.

Lange said that on the first day the provision went into effect one gun sale took seven hours because he was unable to get through to the NICS operation center to run the background check. He had to wait until after the shop had closed before he could finally get through to the system, he said.

"On that first day you couldn't get in no matter what you did," he said.

In two cases he lost potential sales because the customers were unwilling to wait for the background check to be made. Other customers were not sure they wanted to go through with the purchase knowing that the background check was being run.

The second day was better but still was plagued with problems, Lange said. The computer went down several times and most background checks took an hour to run.

By Thursday, the background checks were running much more smoothly and usually taking only 15 minutes.

He said the real test will be this weekend. Friday was payday for many people and today will be a heavy shopping day, especially with Christmas coming up.

"Time will tell how the program works out," he said.

The background check is to insure that the people wanting to buy guns have no criminal record or are not fugitives from justice. Also, people with a history of mental illness, drug addiction or domestic violence are excluded from purchasing a gun, as are illegal aliens, people who have renounced their citizenship or those who were dishonorably discharged from the military.

From February 1994 to Nov. 30, the law only applied to handgun purchases. People who wanted to buy a handgun were required to have a background check run on them by law enforcement before they were allowed to make the purchase.

In Missouri, the handgun provision was not a major change because the state already ran background checks on people wanting to buy a handgun.

A handgun purchaser was required to go to the sheriff's department of the county in which he resided and apply for a permit. The sheriff's department then ran a computerized background check through MULES (Missouri Uniform Law Enforcement System) and NCIC (the National Crime Information Center). If approved, the applicant would be issued a permit to purchase the handgun.

Because Missouri already had the MULES and NCIC system in place and had a set standard for running background checks, the interim measure of the Brady Act had no effect on the way in which handguns were purchased in Missouri.

What changed this week with the permanent provisions of the Brady Act was the way in which long guns -- rifles and shotguns -- are purchased. In the past, no background check was required for a person to purchase a long gun.

As of Nov. 30, however, even people who want to buy a long gun must fill out an application form and go through a computerized background check conducted by the FBI.

The application form is not much different from the forms provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). In the past, people wanting to buy long guns had to fill out a form asking questions about a person's background.

A form still has to be filled at the gun shop, but then shop proprietors must run a background check through the FBI computer in West Virginia.

When the background check is run, the FBI may respond in one of three ways: The purchase may be approved, in which case the gun may be sold; the purchase may be denied, in which case the gun may not be sold; or the purchase may be delayed, in which case the gun may not be immediately sold.

In the case of a delay, the FBI has up to three business days to tell the gun dealer whether the sale is approved or denied. If the FBI fails to notify the dealer in the three-day period, the sale may be made.

Lange said that even if the FBI failed to notify his shop within the three-day period, the shop would still contact the FBI before proceeding with the sale.

"We wouldn't go ahead without checking," he said. "This is the federal government you're dealing with. They could take my license away."

When a sale is not approved, the dealer is told only that the sale is denied or delayed. The FBI does not tell the reason why the sale is denied or delayed.

Since the new provision began, only one of Lange's customers has had the sale delayed by the FBI. None of his customers has been denied.

Although the FBI did not say why the sale was delayed for further investigation, the customer told Lange that he had a misdemeanor marijuana charge when he was a teen-ager. "He said that was the only thing it could be," Lange related.

Lange said he had spoken with other gun dealers in the area, and the consensus was that even the smallest misdemeanors on a person's record were enough to delay the sale of a gun.

"I guess we pay for the sins of the past no matter how minute," he said.