The FBI is now conducting background checks on 18–20 year-old would-be gun purchasers that are a far cry from the instant background checks that have been conducted on gun purchasers since the 1990s.
On April 1, 2024, the NRA-ILA pointed out that the new background checks represent such a departure from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks that they could be called “Never-Instant Criminal Background Checks.”
The enhanced background checks for 18–20 year-old purchasers is part of a 2022 gun control law, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) worked to help Democrats secure.
The FBI explained:
[The BSCA] now requires NICS to go beyond the routine for under-21 gun buyers. In addition to running names through NICS databases, a select group of examiners is now reaching out to state juvenile justice, mental health, and local law enforcement agencies to see if their backgrounds contain potentially disqualifying information that isn’t in the databases automatically queried by NICS. Another provision in the new law extends, where cause to do so is established, the time examiners have to investigate under-21 cases from 3 to 10 business days.
The NRA-ILA noted that it “warned gun owners and policymakers back in 2022 that the BSCA eliminated instant background checks for young adults and would be used by the Biden administration to create a waiting period regime.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a pro-staffer for Pulsar Night Vision. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and holds a Ph.D. in Military History, with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at
