Background Checks and North Carolina

North Carolina has closed the unlicensed sale loophole for handguns, requiring background checks on all handgun sales in the state. Felons, domestic abusers, and other people prohibited from owning guns attempt to buy them regularly in North Carolina—and are stopped because of a background check. 

• Since 1998, more than 80,000 firearm sales to prohibited purchasers have been denied in North Carolina. Each year, the background check system blocks nearly 2,000 illegal sales to convicted felons and nearly 500 illegal sales to domestic abusers.¹Karberg JC, Frandsen RJ, Durso JM, Buskirk TD, Lee AD. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Background checks for firearm transfers, 2015 – Statistical tables. https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/bcft15st.pdf. Data for 2016 through 2019 were obtained by Everytown from the FBI directly. Though the majority of the transactions and denials reported by FBI and BJS are associated with a firearm sale or transfer, a small number may be for concealed carry permits and other reasons not related to a sale or transfer.
• For more than 100 years, North Carolina has required a background check for all handgun sales through a permit to purchase.²1919 N.C. Sess. Laws 397-99, Pub. Laws, An Act to Regulate the Sale of Concealed Weapons in North Carolina, ch. 197.
• The North Carolina Legislature has been a leader in empowering county sheriffs and the FBI, who are responsible for background checks on handgun purchase permits applicants and long gun purchasers at federally licensed gun dealers, respectively, to stop illegal gun purchases.
  • In addition to requiring a background check on all handgun sales, the Legislature has authorized county sheriffs to deny a permit applicant who lacks “good moral character” – or a person who has a red flag in their history indicating they pose a threat to themselves or others.³The sheriff must be satisfied “by affidavits, oral evidence, or otherwise, as to the good moral character of the applicant.” The sheriff may only consider the applicant’s conduct and history for the immediately preceding five-year period in making this determination. N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-404(a)(2).
  • The Legislature has also required prohibiting mental health records – both future records and existing records – to be submitted to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Indeed, as of December 2020, North Carolina had submitted more than 440,000 prohibiting mental health records to NICS.⁴Federal Bureau of Investigation, Active Records in the NICS Indices by State, accessed February 22, 2021, https://bit.ly/3pOgwCZ.
• The North Carolina Legislature has repeatedly rejected efforts to repeal its background check requirement, including in the 2019 and 2020 legislative sessions.

North Carolina has closed the unlicensed sale loophole for handguns, meaning prohibited purchasers cannot skip a background check and acquire a handgun simply by seeking out an unlicensed seller at a gun show or online. But neighboring states have not closed this loophole and enable prohibited people to take advantage of the unlicensed gun market and get handguns illegally. Dramatic research shows the scale of this gaping loophole, as the vast market for no-questions-asked online gun sales has soared during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• An investigation of the online gun market Armlist.com (“Armslist”) revealed a massive marketplace where unchecked gun sales are taking place between complete strangers meeting online, allowing criminals and other prohibited purchasers an easy avenue for access.
• Each year, there are over 43,000 ads offering long guns for sale in North Carolina where no background check is legally required.
  • In neighboring Tennessee, there are over 265,000 ads offering guns for sale on Armslist and in South Carolina, there are over 169,000 ads. Tennessee has the 3rd-highest rate of ads per 100,000 residents in the country and South Carolina has the 7th-highest rate.
• Each one of those posts is an opportunity for a prohibited purchaser to acquire a gun. And research shows prohibited purchasers actively seek out these unregulated ads: In 2018, one in nine people looking to buy guns from unlicensed sellers would have failed a background check, a rate seven times higher than the denial rate at gun stores.⁵Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Unchecked: An Investigation of the Online Firearm Marketplace. February 2021. https://bit.ly/3ufNKio.
• Throughout the pandemic, demand for guns from the online marketplace has dramatically increased. The surge in demand at gun stores has been well documented, but research shows the surge extends to sales that can take place with no background check. The average number of posts on Armslist between March and September 2020 by people across the US looking to purchase a firearm in states that do not require background checks on all sales doubled over the same period in 2019.⁶Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. Undeniable: How Long-Standing Loopholes in the Background Check System Have Been Exacerbated by COVID-19. December 2020. https://bit.ly/2M7E9ZJ.
• Background check laws make a difference in whether sellers will require a background check to complete a sale.
  • Unlicensed sellers in states that have passed background check laws show a high degree of compliance—with 84 percent of sellers from states with background check laws directly stating the sale would need a check. In contrast, only 6 percent of the unlicensed sellers in states without background check laws indicated they would require a background check on their sales.⁷Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Unchecked.”
  • Indeed, in North Carolina, where state law requires a background check on all unlicensed handgun sales but not on unlicensed long gun sales, 81 percent of unlicensed sellers of handguns directly stated the sale would require a background check while only 29 percent of unlicensed sellers of long guns indicated they would require a check.⁸Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund, “Unchecked.”

Congress’s failure to close the unlicensed sale loophole nationally enables gun trafficking and the use of crime guns in North Carolina.

• Existing loopholes in the federal background check law are negatively impacting states, like North Carolina, that require background checks on all handgun sales. Research has shown that state laws requiring background checks for all handgun sales are associated with 48 percent lower rates of gun trafficking in cities and 29 percent lower rates of gun trafficking across state lines.⁹Daniel W. Webster, Jon S. Vernick, and Maria T. Bulzacchelli, “Effects of State-Level Firearm Seller Accountability Policies on Firearm Trafficking,” Journal of Urban Health 86, no. 4 (July 2009): 525–37; Federal law bars felons from having firearms, but does not bar people with misdemeanors outside the domestic violence context from having firearms; Daniel W. Webster, Jon S. Vernick, Emma Beth McGinty, and Ted Alcorn, “Preventing the Diversion of Guns to Criminals Through Effective Firearm Sales Laws,” in Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, 109-121. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.
• And the unregulated, online marketplace has enabled prohibited purchasers to weaken state background check laws by traveling to neighboring states without these laws. Between 2016 and 2017, three individuals were arrested for trafficking an estimated 90 firearms purchased on Armslist.com and Facebook into Illinois from Kentucky. These firearms were subsequently linked to violent crimes in Illinois.¹⁰Yablon A. Chicago felons busted for gun trafficking bought weapons via Armslist and Facebook. The Trace. May 16, 2018. Available at https://www.thetrace.org/newsletter/chicago-gun-trafficking-armslist-facebook/.

Too many North Carolinians are killed or wounded with guns, costing the state billions of dollars.

• Every year, nearly 1,400 North Carolinians are killed with guns and over 3,400 more are wounded.¹¹Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (WISQARS) Fatal Injury Reports. A yearly average was developed using five years of most recent available data: 2015 to 2019; Ted R. Miller and David Swedler, analysis of HCUP nonfatal injury: 2017.
• Gun violence costs North Carolina $9.6 billion each year, of which $418 million is paid by taxpayers.¹²Ted R. Miller, analysis of CDC fatal injury: 2018 and HCUP nonfatal injury: 2017.
• State laws requiring background checks for all handgun sales—by point-of-sale check and/or permit—are associated with lower firearm homicide rates, lower firearm suicide rates and lower firearm trafficking.¹³Michael Siegel and Claire Boine, What Are the Most Effective Policies in Reducing Gun Homicides? Albany, NY: Rockefeller Institute of Government, March 2019. https://bit.ly/2YPAz7P;  Eric W. Fleegler, Lois K. Lee, Michael C. Monuteaux, David Hemenway, and Rebekah Mannix, “Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States,” JAMA Internal Medicine 173,no. 9 (2013): 732-740; Daniel W. Webster, Jon S. Vernick, and Maria T. Bulzacchelli, “Effects of State-Level Firearm Seller Accountability Policies on Firearm Trafficking,” Journal of Urban Health 86, no. 4 (July 2009): 525–537. Federal law bars felons from having firearms but does not bar misdemeanors outside the domestic violence context. Daniel W. Webster, Jon S. Vernick, Emma Beth McGinty, and Ted Alcorn, “Preventing the Diversion of Guns to Criminals Through Effective Firearm Sales Laws,” in Reducing Gun Violence in America: Informing Policy with Evidence and Analysis, 109-121. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013. A 2019 analysis found that states that require a background check on all gun sales have homicide rates 10 percent lower than states without them.¹⁴Michael Siegel and Claire Boine, What Are the Most Effective Policies in Reducing Gun Homicides? (Albany, NY: Rockefeller Institute of Government, March 2019) https://bit.ly/2YPAz7P.