I went into a local sporting goods store today intending to purchase an inexpensive hunting item on sale for $20. I was surprised to see a rifle on sale that I have been wanting to purchase for the last two years. I can confirm with absolute authority that NICS is very much up and running today during the federal government shutdown.

“How about National Instant Criminal Background Check system (e.g. NICS)? Is that shut down as well? If it is shut down, then law abiding citizens who have no criminal record are unable to purchase firearms at licensed public firearm sellers.

Fun question: if the NICS is shut down, can licensed public firearm sellers proceed with sales anyway after the statutorily defined three day maximum wait time for an NICS response?”

The submission to NIC;s for a firearms sale does not actually go strait to NIC’s. NIC;s its self never closes even in a shut down, and is still available for states and law enforcement and government.

The submission to NIC;s for a firearms sale actually goes to an ATF ‘middle man’ system that interfaces with NIC’s. If the ATF ‘middle man’ system processing is shut down due to the shut down then a few possible scenarios can take place:

1. The ATF system will accept a submission but its put into a status of ‘open’ in which case there is a 30 day limit and if there is no ‘proceed’ during that 30 day period then the transfer can not take place.

2. The ATF system will accept a submission but its put into a status of ‘delayed’ in which case there is a 3 day limit (not counting the day of submission, weekends, or federal holidays) and after that 3 day expiration the transfer can take place.

3. The ATF system IS NOT accepting submissions at all. Now this is a tricky one. If the federal government ‘refuses’ (by the government shut down) to accept submissions – Generally, (if state law allows it) a state can direct its state level law enforcement, or all law enforcement, departments in the state to conduct firearm transfer background checks via their access to NIC’s – but this is where it gets tricky, although the state can direct its state level law enforcement (i.e. highway patrol) to do it, it can’t actually make non-state level law enforcement do it (i.e. a city police department). Little do people know, but during 2021, for a few days in March, the ATF shut down the submission system acceptance from some states (yes, ‘red states’) so there were a bunch of ‘open’ responses – and some states did pick up the slack and started running checks their selves when this happened so the checks did not go through the ATF system so the ATF had no visibility over them as they were just straight NIC’s checks like police would run on anyone, and the sales happened (yes, a state can do this kind of check to have a firearm sale happen) so the ATF put the system back on line as soon as they realized they had lost visibility over 4473 checks forgetting that states can do this too through straight-to-NIC;s checks. So the shut down for those states lasted two days.

But, in the complete absence of either state or federal government checks, unless state law dictates otherwise (because there is no federal law for this) – the 10th Amendment; The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, OR TO THE PEOPLE.

Fun question: if the NICS is shut down, can licensed public firearm sellers proceed with sales anyway after the statutorily defined three day maximum wait time for an NICS response?

I hope the federal government stays shut down.

Just like many libertarians liberals and leftists supported the police being ordered to stand down.