Anytime there's a change with the NICS background checks--the checks you undergo when you buy a gun in most states--I get a little nervous. After all, the current administration wants everyone to go through such a check for any gun transfer, including me giving a firearm to my son who I know for a fact isn't prohibited from owning one.
Luckily, those changes aren't exactly common. Yet one just happened that has me a smidge confused.
See, the NICS checks are for gun buyers, but now the Department of Justice is opening them up for gun dealers to use to check their employees.
Licensed gun dealers would be able to run their employees through the government’s background check system under a new rule the Biden administration proposed Wednesday.
Under current rules, dealers are only supposed to run checks on prospective purchasers. But the Justice Department says it wants dealers to be able to voluntarily check their own workers who handle firearms.
The department also proposed a second rule that would firm up an existing policy that calls for those under age 21 to undergo more stringent background checks by giving the FBI access to juvenile records.
...
“FFLs may inadvertently employ prohibited persons, who would then have access to firearms through their employment duties and who may be able to use their positions to engage in illegal trafficking of firearms or to otherwise illegally possess or use firearms,” Mr. Garland said in justifying the proposal.
The checks are made possible by the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, so they're apparently legal, and they can't happen without written authorization from the individual being checked, but my question is, just how many gun stores are hiring people without a background check in the first place?
I know if I'm dealing in something that is valuable and has a black market demand, I'm going to make sure my employees are as squeaky clean as they can be. I'm going to insist on a criminal background check before I ever let them fill out a W2.
Moreover, is this really an issue anyway? Do we have an epidemic of gun store employees trafficking guns?
I mean, I've seen the odd story here and there, but at no point in those stores was it revealed they were a prohibited person in the first place. So what gives?
Honestly, the more I ponder this, the more I think that while this is starting out as optional, the goal is to start punishing gun stores that don't do it if something goes sideways with an employee down the road. "This tool was available to you and you didn't use it, so you're at fault, even though it was supposedly optional."
They'll have to use the system, to document that they used the system on each employee, and likely have to do it regularly just to stay up to date. That means more paperwork, tracking of when people are "due" for another "optional" NICS check, etc.
If that's what happens, it'll be nothing but another headache to add to licensed gun dealers' already lengthy list of federal headaches.