It has been revealed that the State of Virginia added 46,000 citizens to the FBI’s NICS prohibited person list by “mistake“.
A Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) request from Gun Owners of America(GOA) revealed that the state of Virginia had incorrectly added 46,000 Virginia to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System(NICS) database. The specific list these citizens were added to prevented them from buying a gun in any state.
How did this happen?
In the state of Virginia, if someone is voluntarily committed to a mental institution they automatically lose their gun rights. The Federal government only does this if you are involuntarily committed at a mental institution.
What happened was that those who were excluded from owning firearms in the state of Virginia were added to the federal list despite not meeting the federal criteria for being prohibited from firearm ownership.
Virginia police are allowed to add names to the NICS database and when they add an individual who is not allowed to own a firearm in the state they are supposed to mark the individual as being barred by state law. Virginia state police did not do this correctly and this is why so many were wrongly added to the list.
This story was originally broken over at Ammoland in an article by John Crump.
