Acting FBI Deputy Director Andrew Bowdich testified last week that the Obama administration gave the order to purge more than 500,000 names from the background check database. The database, titled the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, is used to stop people with certain criminal convictions or open arrest warrants from buying guns.
Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Bowdich said, “It was the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel that reviewed the law and believed that it needed to be interpreted so that if someone was a fugitive in a state, there had to be indications that they had crossed state lines.” Without that indication, the DOJ does not consider someone a fugitive. Speaking about the record purge, he said, “That was a decision made under the previous administration.”
The NICS system is intended to prevent criminals from buying guns. Due to the records purge, a violent criminal hiding from the police might still be able to buy a gun at a gun store in his home state. Obama’s DOJ created an opportunity for half a million people who shouldn’t have guns, to get them – without being caught by the background check system.
The purge occurred in February 2017, and news of it broke in November of that year. At the time, it appeared to be a grave error by the Trump White House. Only through Bowdich’s testimony on Wednesday did the truth become public.
Why would the DOJ do such a thing? It all stems from disagreement over the meaning of the word “fugitive.”
Until February, the NICS system would flag someone as a fugitive if there was a was an open warrant out for that person’s arrest. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms has a stricter definition; a fugitive under ATF rules is someone with an open warrant who has also crossed state lines.
For the record, Merriam-Webster maintains that a fugitive is anyone on the run from the law, no matter whether or not they travel to another jurisdiction. Unfortunately, Obama’s Justice Department decided that NICS should also use the narrower ATF definition. Now, more than 500,000 people with open arrest warrants could potentially buy guns without any red flags raised on their background checks.
Failures of the NICS system are rare, but deadly. An inspector general report found that, when NICS blocks a gun sale, it does so correctly in 99.8 percent percent of cases. It is unknown if the records of the 500,000 fugitives still exist, leaving open the potential for reinstatement, or if the records have been deleted permanently.
Angela Morabito (@AngelaLMorabito) writes about politics, media, ethics, and culture. She holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Georgetown University.
