The Department of Justice on Monday night rolled out firearm safety measures in the wake of the shooting that left 17 dead at a high school in Parkland, Fla., last month, as well as numerous other high profile mass shootings in Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs, Texas.
The scope of the new measures is vast and includes a big push by Attorney General Jeff Sessions to improve the reporting of information by state and and local jurisdictions, as well as federal agencies, to federal databases that is then used to determine if someone should be approved to purchase a firearm.
In a memo sent Monday to the FBI director, Sessions directs Christopher Wray to have the FBI better support state and local jurisdictions that want to improve their information sharing — both with one another and with the federal government — and to identify those that do not fully report arrests that could disqualify someone from purchasing a firearm.
Sessions is also directing the FBI to identify what state and local jurisdictions do not make mental health records and domestic violence convictions available to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.
It is voluntary for state and local jurisdictions to report such information into their databases that is then used by NICS during the firearm-buying process.
Sessions told Wray, “[W]e cannot allow an individual who is prohibited from possessing firearms to pass a background check simply because information was not made available to you.”
“This is an important time to lift the system to a higher level,” Sessions wrote.
Federal agencies also have have 45 days to prove full compliance with a federal requirement to report relevant records to NICS, Sessions announced. Though federal agencies are required by law to report to NICS, there are no statutory punishments for not reporting.
The man responsible for the shooting at a church in Sutherland Springs was prohibited from buying or possessing a firearm due to a domestic violence conviction in a court martial while serving in the U.S Air Force. However, the Air Force failed to record the conviction in its database, which would have been flagged by NICS when the gunman legally bought his firearms.
The Justice Department also announced Monday it will implore schools to hire more school resource officers and prioritize giving grants to state and local jurisdictions that want to do so.
“No child should have to fear going to school or walking the streets of their neighborhood,” Sessions said in a statement.
The Justice Department also reiterated that it has submitted a proposed regulation to the Office of Management and Budget that would “effectively ban the manufacture, sale or possession” of bump stocks — an announcement made Saturday.
One of the biggest pushes by gun control advocates after the Parkland shooting was to make it illegal to own or sell bump stocks — devices which allow a semi-automatic firearm to mimic the firing rate of fully automatic weapons, which are banned for civilian use. Though bump stocks were not used in the Parkland shooting, they were found among the weapons used in the deadly October 2017 attack in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and more than 400 others injured.
Sessions is also directing all U.S. attorneys to more “swiftly and aggressively” prosecute cases against people who lie on their application to buy a firearm about something that would otherwise disqualify them from being approved to purchase.
“Under my tenure as Attorney General, we have already increased federal gun prosecutions to a 10-year high — and we are just getting started. With these new measures in place, we are better positioned to disarm criminals and protect the law-abiding people of this country,” Sessions said.
