This year, the number of filings made to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System – that of 203,086 requests on Black Friday – topped last year’s tally for a single-day high of 185,713.
Those records were also set on Black Friday, according to USA Today. 2016’s commercialist orgy saw 185,713 requests, while the previous year the figure stood at 185,345.
The increase may be due, in part, to Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordering a review of the system after an Air Force veteran massacred 25 churchgoers in Sutherland Springs, Texas with a rifle he should not have been permitted to purchase if the Air Force reported his criminal convictions.
The Pentagon’s inspector general launched a separate review of the Texas gunman, Devin P. Kelley, after the Air Force revealed it had failed to submit his domestic abuse case to the database.
In a statement, Sessions said he was directing the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ‘to do a comprehensive review of the NICS and report back to me the steps we can take to ensure that those who are prohibited from purchasing firearms are prevented from doing so’.
Kelley was facing a court martial by the US Air Force at the time, on charges of assaulting his wife and stepson.
A customer sights a shotgun at a gun shop on November 5, 2016, in Merrimack, New Hampshire. But the Pentagon has long known about failures to give military criminal history information to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The problem has also caught the attention Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who joined forces on legislation that aims to strengthen the database by ensuring federal agencies and states accurately report relevant criminal information to the FBI.
