Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 and Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022-Implementation Revisions for National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE <CFR>28 CFR Part 25</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FBI-158; AG Order No. 6100-2024]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1110-AA36</RIN> <SUBJECT>Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 and Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2022—Implementation Revisions for National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Justice. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of proposed rulemaking; request for comment. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The United States Department of Justice (“Department”) proposes to amend its regulations pertaining to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (“NICS”) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) to implement parts of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022 (“CAA”) and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (“BSCA”) by proposing additional, relevant definitions and procedures to reflect and implement the statutory mandates described above. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments must be postmarked, and electronic comments must be submitted, on or before February 10, 2025. Commenters should be aware the electronic Federal Docket Management System will not accept comments after 11:59 p.m., Eastern Time, on the last day of the comment period. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> You may submit comments, identified by RIN 1110-AA36 or Docket No. FBI-158, by either of the following methods: <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Mail:</E> Charles Klebe, Assistant General Counsel, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Office of the General Counsel, Module C-3, 1000 Custer Hollow Road, Clarksburg, West Virginia 26306-0110; ATTN: Docket No. FBI-158. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions received must include the agency name and RIN (1110-AA36) or docket number (FBI-158) for this notice of proposed rulemaking. In general, all properly completed comments received will be posted without change to the Federal eRulemaking portal, <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. For detailed instructions on submitting comments and additional information on the rulemaking process, see the “Public Participation” heading of the <E T="02">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION</E> section of this document. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Jill A. Montgomery, NICS Business and Liaison Unit Chief, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Criminal Justice Information Services Division, NICS Section. Telephone: (304) 625-0606 (this is not a toll-free number). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Public Participation</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Comments Sought</HD> The Department welcomes public comments from any interested person on any aspect of the changes proposed in this rule. In particular, and as discussed in more detail in the parts of this preamble that describe specific changes, the Department seeks comments from the public on the proposed amendments to NICS regulations regarding: (1) identifying firearms prohibitions imposed by local and Tribal governments; (2) providing denial notifications to local law enforcement; (3) conducting enhanced background checks of under-21 transactions; (4) collecting, using, and purging, where applicable, residential address information to comply with the statutory requirements of the CAA and BSCA; and (5) implementing a delay of up to 10 business days for under-21 transactions where NICS has notified the FFLs that additional research is required to determine if the prospective transferees have prohibiting juvenile records as described in 18 U.S.C. 922(d). The Department also seeks comments on a potential attestation process to facilitate interactions with State and local agencies, as described more fully in Section II.D of this preamble. The Department will carefully consider all properly submitted public comments in drafting any final rules. All comments must reference RIN 1110-AA36 or this document's docket number, FBI-158, and be legible. Please do not submit, under this proposed rule, any comments pertaining to a different rule that may be discussed in limited detail below. After those other proposed rules are published, public comments concerning those proposed rules should be submitted as directed within those rules. Please note that all comments received are considered part of the public record and may be made available for public inspection online at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Information made available for public inspection may include personal identifying information (such as name, address, etc.) submitted by the commenter. <HD SOURCE="HD2">B. Confidentiality</HD> In general, the Department will make all comments, whether submitted electronically or on paper, available for public viewing on the internet through the Federal eRulemaking Portal. If you do not want your name or other personal identification information posted on the internet as part of your comment, you must include the phrase “PERSONAL IDENTIFYING INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also locate all the personal identifying information that you do not want posted online in the first paragraph of your comment and identify what information you want the Department to redact. Personal identifying information identified and located as set forth above will be placed in the Department's public docket file but not posted online. If you wish to submit confidential business information as part of your comment but do not wish it to be posted online, you must include the phrase “CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION” in the first paragraph of your comment. You must also prominently identify confidential business information to be redacted within the comment. If a comment has so much confidential business information that it cannot be effectively redacted, the Department may choose not to post that comment (or to post only part of the comment) on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Confidential business information identified and located as set forth above will not be placed in the public docket file, nor will it be posted online. <HD SOURCE="HD2">C. Submitting Comments</HD> Submit comments in either of the following ways (but do not submit the same comment multiple times or by more than one method). Hand-delivered comments will not be accepted. • <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal:</E> The Department recommends that you submit your comments via the Federal eRulemaking portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and follow the instructions. Please keep the comment tracking number that is provided after you have successfully uploaded your comment. • <E T="03">Mail:</E> Send written comments to the address listed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section of this document. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Background and Purpose</HD> The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 (“Brady Act”), Public Law 103-159, 107 Stat. 1536, required the Attorney General to establish a national system for FFLs, more specifically, federally licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers of firearms under 18 U.S.C. 923, to request immediate information as to whether the transfer of a firearm to any given unlicensed person could proceed. To implement that requirement, the Department created NICS and delegated management of NICS to the FBI. <E T="03">See</E> 28 CFR 25.3. NICS is managed by the NICS Section of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (“CJIS”) Division. <FTREF/> The NICS Section processed the first NICS background check on November 30, 1998. Background events that prohibited persons from being able, under the Brady Act, to receive a firearm were those specified in 18 U.S.C. 922(g) and (n)  <SU>1</SU> and applicable State law(s). <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  Examples of prohibitions under 18 U.S.C. 922(g) and (n) include, but are not limited to, having sustained a conviction for, or being under indictment or information for, a “crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” (including State offenses denominated as misdemeanors but punishable by more than 2 years of imprisonment, <E T="03">see</E> 18 U.S.C. 921(a)(20)); being a fugitive from justice; being addicted to or being an unlawful user of a controlled substance; being adjudicated as a mental defective or being committed to a mental institution; being subject to certain protection orders; and having sustained a conviction for a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  Applicable State law prohibitions are those imposed by the State where the prospective transfer is occurring and the State where the transferee resides (if the State of residence is different than the State of transfer). Additionally, other State laws may be relevant to determining if a Federal firearms prohibition (under 18 U.S.C. 922(d), (g), or (n), as applicable) applies to the prospective transferee. Suppose, for instance, a resident of South Dakota is attempting to receive a rifle or shotgun (“long gun”) from an FFL in Iowa. That prospective transferee, however, has a prior felony-level conviction from a State court in Washington. The State laws of South Dakota, Iowa, and Washington would all be considered during that transaction to assess that person's ability to receive a firearm under State and Federal law. </FTNT> Since that first NICS background check in 1998, FFLs have initiated NICS background checks by contacting the FBI or a designated “point of contact” (“POC”). <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> FFLs contacted the FBI by phone or electronically. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> FFLs in each State are ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 161k characters. 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