Vancouver, Washington firearms retailer Dan Mitchell is happy that the State Patrol’s background check system, which had been down 17 days until it was restored Sunday afternoon, but he is also demanding answers, and assurances it will not happen again.
As earlier reported, the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) system was taken offline earlier this month due to “unauthorized activity,” and as a result, the Secure Automated Firearms E-Check (SAFE) was shut down. Background checks were suspended as of Nov. 1, creating a huge backlog and as much ill will from gun rights activists, gun dealers and gun buyers.
The computer problem made national headlines with coverage in the New York Post and on Fox News.
According to a text message Sunday from WSP spokesman Chris Loftis, “WSP Firearms Background staff will take this next week to get caught up and it will take a while to navigate all outstanding checks, but we will work them as quickly as we safely and accurately can. We are cognizant of the public’s legal rights to own, purchase, and sell firearms and will continue to do our best to mitigate the impacts of the recent system outage as expeditiously as the law, safety and capacity will allow.”
In a follow-up message, Loftis added, “I can only speak to the SAFE system and have no insights to the overall cyber situation at AOC. Those questions would be better directed to them directly.”
As of Monday afternoon, Loftis advised the WSP had completed more than 13,000 backlogged checks.
Mitchell didn’t wait to start asking questions. He posed several on Facebook:
1) How secure is the state’s system?
2) How poor is the state’s response to a constitutional issue?
3) How do we fix this issue in particular?
4) When does the DOL registry get hacked? Pistol transfer records from 1935, Semi auto rifles since 2019 and everything since January 1, 2024. That’s a lot of personal data available from the State’s porous IT firewalls and security.
Via email, Mitchell wrote, “With the restoration of the court records access, the state has restored its obligation to not willfully impair or infringe on our constitutional rights. Sadly, the state has set another example of how vulnerable and weak their computer databases are. Imagine if the state’s firearm registry going back to 1935, was hacked and exposed? It’s just a matter of time, the state of Washington IT systems prove to be outdated, unreliable and vulnerable.
“We’re pleased that the system is operational,” he continued, “but the case has proven the state is not a secure guardian of our rights, nor our data. The legislature must take action to assure our 2nd Amendment rights will be protected, even if their computers fail, and even when it’s not during business hours.”
Mitchell posted this message on Facebook Sunday:
Last week, the Second Amendment Foundation threatened legal action against the State Patrol if the system didn’t promptly go back online. SAF’s Alan Gottlieb made it clear there could be legal action.
“State law apparently does not allow WSP to work around this sort of problem,” he noted in a release to the media, “which means that needs to change immediately. As the saying goes, ‘A right delayed is a right denied,’ and the state has denied untold numbers of citizens their right to obtain firearms for almost two weeks. This amounts to a mass deprivation of civil rights under color of law.
“The clock is ticking,” Gottlieb said. “When the system is restored, we expect the WSP to work day and night to expedite background checks already on hold. In the meantime, we are consulting with our attorneys to determine the proper course of action.”
There were apparently several thousand backlogged check requests, but TGM has been advised by sources that almost immediately after the SAFE system was back up and functional, messages went from “Processing” to “Proceed.”
The consensus within the firearms community is that the system must be fixed, and a backup strategy must be created, whether it would be for the state to fall back on the FBI’s NICS system, or adopt legislation scrapping the SAFE system and just revert back to NICS for all firearms background checks.
