Boom: FBI gun background check system passes 400 million

For the first time since it started in 1998, the FBI’s gun background check program passed 400 million last month when another 2.7 million were conducted.

The number has been on a fast rise since the 2020 presidential election followed by growing safety concerns due to COVID-19 and city riots.

The National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, said it has been used 400,540,500 times since the first was done in November 1998. The NICS was created by the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which was authored by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and signed by former President Bill Clinton in 1993.

It was named after former President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary James Brady was shot, like Reagan, in an assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. in 1981.