PA Bill Number: HB829
Title: In preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Description: An Act amending the act of April 12, 1951 (P.L.90, No.21), known as the Liquor Code, in preliminary provisions, further providing for definitions;
Last Action: Signed in House
Last Action Date: Jul 3, 2024
Pennsylvania lawmakers likely to take up background checks for gun buyers :: 03/25/2018
Pennsylvania legislators in the coming weeks are likely to battle over competing visions for background checks for gun buyers, including whether the state system should be scrapped entirely and, if it does remain in place, how to pay for the checks.
Support for background checks is extraordinarily high among the public, but bills introduced in Harrisburg show widely different views of how to make sure gun buyers meet standards for legally purchasing firearms.
Pennsylvania is one of 13 states that taps into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and other federal databases in addition to operating its own system for checking state and local records. That state system is called the Pennsylvania Instant Check System. PICS checks criminal, juvenile, mental health, protection from abuse and wanted/missing persons records.
Both are likely to be on the minds of state legislators when the House Judiciary Committee holds hearings April 9-12 on a number of firearms-related bills.
If there is agreement between legislators who want additional gun laws and those who oppose them, it is on background checks. A statewide Muhlenberg College poll released this month showed support for background checks at 96 percent, an all-time high. The trend is the same nationwide, according to a recent Monmouth University poll, which found that 83 percent favor background checks on all gun transactions.
Background checks also would reduce the number of mass school shootings and prevent more people with severe mental illness from possessing guns, say strong majorities in polls last month by USA Today and CNN, respectively.
But some Republicans in Harrisburg say Pennsylvania can eliminate the state PICS system while still making background checks more comprehensive. State Rep. Jason Ortitay, R-Allegheny, and state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, R-Washington, introduced National Rifle Association-supported bills last year seeking to scrap PICS.
Bartolotta’s office says records such as protection from abuse orders collected through PICS are not sent to the federal system, potentially allowing a person prohibited from buying a long gun in Pennsylvania to buy one out of state.
“If those are not reported to the NICS system, they can go into gun shops in neighboring states [and buy a gun] because it’s not on a national database,” she said.
Objections to PICS go back to 2011 when it was revealed state police had not uploaded hundreds of thousands of records of people who had been involuntarily committed to an institution. At that time, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives had not decided if people who had been involuntarily committed lost their right to buy firearms.
Eventually, state police did ship the records to NICS, and now Pennsylvania is “the highest submitter of mental health records absolutely and per capita” among all states, state police Maj. Scott Price said.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation ranks Pennsylvania first among states for submitting mental health records to NICS. The system, which is also used for other gun-related transactions, handled 1.1 million checks in 2016, with nearly 800,000 of them for gun transactions, according to state police’s most recent report.
Ortitay and Bartolotta still question whether the state is uploading all the appropriate records to the national system. Formatting differences between the state and federal systems also may be preventing records from entering NICS, Bartolotta noted.
“The intent of the bill would be to strengthen background checks and fill in a lot of gaps that exist when things are reported to the PICS system and they don’t go onto the national instant check system,” Bartolotta said.
“We don’t need more gun laws,” she added. “We need to enforce the ones we have on the books now.”
Price disagrees “completely” that Pennsylvania would be better off without PICS. As one example, Pennsylvania recently completed an upgrade with the federal system that would address the out-of-state purchase issue Bartolotta cited.
“At the end of 2017, we had 122 NICS denials … for transactions that otherwise likely would have been allowed to proceed,” Price said.
PICS captures some juvenile records that would not be found in NICS, state police Cpl. Scott Reed said. It also catches some prospective gun buyers who are the subject of protection from abuse orders that lack identifying information.
A 2015 audit by the Pennsylvania Legislative Budget and Finance Committee found that at any time there may be 1,300-1,400 orders that lack birth dates, Social Security numbers or other identifying information. Those records would not be caught by the National Crime Information Center, a subsystem of NICS, but could be flagged by PICS, it said.
PICS also defers to caution when a background check is not conclusive, Price and Reed said. If a check does not explicitly permit or deny the sale, PICS defaults to prohibiting the sale; the NICS default is to permit the sale.
Further, 152 fugitives were arrested in 2016 attempting to buy firearms in Pennsylvania because PICS, unlike the national system, alerts authorities in jurisdictions where such sales are attempted, the state police’s 2016 Firearms Report said. NICS, on the other hand, only notifies the community from which the alleged fugitive fled, the audit said. Since the inception of PICS in 1998, 2,123 alleged fugitives were arrested trying to buy firearms, the report said.
“We’re very confident in how robust our system is,” Reed said. “We believe that PICS is very useful and benefits the people of Pennsylvania. We certainly would not want to see it defunded.”
The state police have put together a strong background check system that should be supported, said State Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Montgomery, the chairwoman of PA SAFE, a legislative group that supports additional gun laws.
“Some people say PICS is duplicative and a waste of money,” Dean said. “It isn’t. To scrap the system would be to allow more people to fall through the cracks.”
Gun dealers, like legislators, are of differing minds.
Gerard Stezelberger, owner of the Relic Hunter Firing Line in North Whitehall Township, said the current system works well and was without backlogs during the holiday buying season. But, he said, it is “kind of a redundancy.”
“I don’t know why we have it,” he said.
Rick Koehler, owner of Eagle Arms in Breinigsville, likes the system and would prefer to see it expanded to cover the one category of gun transfers not subject to a background check in Pennsylvania: the private sale of a long gun, which state police say would add an estimated 21,000 checks to the system.
NICS has one clear advantage over PICS, however: cost.
Pennsylvania charges $2 for each background check and a $3 surcharge on taxable gun sales, but that doesn’t cover all the costs. According to the 2015 audit, the state would need to charge $11 per check to make the system self-sustaining.
Of the other 12 states that do their own checks, only Connecticut, which does not charge a fee, charges less than Pennsylvania, the audit said. Pennsylvania taxpayers are responsible for picking up $1 million to $5 million a year for background checks, the audit said. There is no fee for NICS background checks.
Ortitay, who is sponsoring the bill to end PICS, said he too wants to make sure background checks are as comprehensive as possible, but believes those permitted to buy firearms shouldn’t have to pay a fee to exercise their Second Amendment rights.
“We’re trying to make it safer and all-encompassing,” Ortitay said. “The second part is to make it cheaper.”
Dean, however, said the relatively small price for a background check should outweigh considerations when children in elementary schools are being taught what to do during active shooter situations.
“We ask so much more of our children than we do of gun owners or gun manufacturers,” Dean said. “And now somebody is going to talk about a fee for a background check? That astonishes me.”
STATE BACKGROUND CHECKS
In 2016, the Pennsylvania Instant Check System did background checks for 1.1 million potential gun purchases. Here is more information about those checks.
- Approval rate: 98 percent
- Denials: 16,964
- Appeals: 5,619
- Reversal based on appeal: 1,860
- Arrests for attempting to illegally buy a firearm: 733
Source: Pennsylvania State Police Firearms Annual Report
