WASHINGTON — The gun reform law Congress passed after two mass shootings by teenagers last year has begun blocking some firearm sales to people under 21.
So far, more stringent background checks for younger gun buyers have resulted in 64 denied transactions, an FBI spokesperson told HuffPost on Wednesday.
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The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed by President Joe Biden in June, expanded criminal background checks for sales at licensed gun dealers to include searches of juvenile records for prospective buyers ages 18 to 20.
The new law requires the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System to look for potentially disqualifying information at local law enforcement agencies, state criminal juvenile justice repositories, and state custodians of mental health records. Previously, the system generally looked only at adult court records.
The expanded checks were phased in with just one state participating in October and a national rollout on Jan. 3. Since the law’s enactment, the system has denied 425 transactions involving buyers ages 18 to 20, the — but Republicans wouldn’t hear it.
The eventual compromise included the expanded background checks, grants for states to enact “red flag” laws, extra funding for mental health services, and a temporary ban on gun ownership for abusive dating partners.
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But even though the law expanded background checks for gun buyers under 21, lawmakers did not close the massive loophole exempting firearm sales from background checks if the seller is not a licensed firearms dealer. In other words, if a background check prevents a teenager from buying a rifle from a licensed dealer, he can still buy the rifle at a gun show or from a stranger on Facebook without passing a background check. Not only is there no background check, there is no federal age restriction for private rifle sales.
An October shooting illustrated how the loophole works. Police said a background check prevented a 19-year-old from buying an assault rifle from a licensed dealer in Missouri — potentially an example of the new law’s expanded background checks in action.
But all the teen had to do was turn to a private seller who had bought an assault rifle from a licensed dealer two years prior. The 19-year-old brought the gun to his former high school, where he killed two people and wounded seven others before police arrived and shot him.
