Congress has debated gun legislation for decades with predictable results: impasse, recrimination, and no measurable improvement in public safety. The reason is simple: both sides are fighting the wrong battle.
Gun rights advocates resist any new restrictions, correctly noting that existing laws go unenforced and that law-abiding owners bear the burden of every new prohibition. Gun control advocates push restrictions that the Supreme Court, through District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), McDonald v. Chicago (2010), and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen (2022), has progressively constrained. Both camps largely ignore the one area of genuine bipartisan opportunity: modernizing the technology underlying the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
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NICS, operational since 1998, is a remarkable tool, but it’s a 1990s solution operating in a 2026 environment. It screens purchases from federal firearms dealers against criminal, mental health, and other prohibited records. The problem is its architecture: fragmented databases that rely on inconsistent state reporting, manual processes that cause delays, and a statutory “default proceed” provision that allows sales to complete after three business days even if a check remains unresolved.
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These aren’t theoretical vulnerabilities. The FBI’s 2024 NICS Operations Report documented more than 110,000 denials of prohibited buyers last year alone, out of more than 500 million checks processed since launch. The gaps are well-documented. Criminals exploit the delays. Straw purchasers exploit fragmented records. What’s missing isn’t the evidence; it’s the investment in technology to close the holes.
That investment is now available and well within reach. Machine learning models could integrate the Interstate Identification Index, the National Crime Information Center, NICS Indices, and state mental health records through natural language processing, flagging prohibited people in milliseconds rather than days. Advanced biometrics would eliminate false delays caused by common name matches, a persistent frustration for law-abiding buyers. Predictive risk scoring, built with appropriate oversight, could auto-clear low-risk applicants and route genuinely uncertain cases to expedited review.
The result: faster service for the roughly 107 million law-abiding gun owners in the United States and a system that’s considerably harder to circumvent for the much smaller population of prohibited persons who try.
This is an area where Congress can actually act, and where there’s a genuine constituency across party lines. Red-state Republicans who defend gun rights have every reason to support a faster, more accurate NICS. Blue-state Democrats who prioritize reducing gun violence have every reason to fund upgrades that would catch more prohibited buyers. The politics, in other words, are more tractable here than anywhere else in the gun debate.
Three practical steps are immediately achievable. Congress should authorize and fund AI integration into NICS, with explicit requirements for bias auditing and privacy protection. Reporting mandates need strengthening — the system can only screen against records that have been submitted, and too many states remain inconsistent reporters. And the three-day “default proceed” provision should be reformed to allow additional time for genuinely uncertain cases, paired with hard deadlines to prevent indefinite delay.
Alongside background check modernization, national concealed carry reciprocity deserves a serious look. H.R. 38, the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act, cleared the House Judiciary Committee in March 2025 and was reported to the full House in October. It would require states to honor valid concealed carry permits from other states, analogous to driver’s license reciprocity. The Crime Prevention Research Center’s 2025 annual analysis finds that permit holders in Florida and Texas are convicted of firearms-related violations at one-twelfth the rate of police officers. These aren’t dangerous people.
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Opponents argue reciprocity would undermine state sovereignty. Paired with AI-enhanced NICS verification, real-time eligibility confirmation would ensure only vetted individuals exercise this right across state lines. States could retain their sensitive-place restrictions.
The gun debate in the U.S. isn’t intractable. What’s missing is the willingness to act where action is achievable. Modernizing NICS isn’t a Second Amendment or a gun control issue; it’s a long-overdue technology update with a clear political path forward. The 119th Congress has the opportunity to demonstrate that improving background checks and respecting constitutional rights aren’t in conflict. The Senate, in particular, should move this forward.
Jay Rogers is a financial professional with more than 30 years of experience in private equity, private credit, hedge funds, and wealth management. He has a BS from Northeastern University and has completed postgraduate studies at UCLA, UPENN, and Harvard. He writes about issues in finance, constitutional law, national security, human nature, and public policy. He is a life member of the NRA.
