Washington State Court Outage Halts Gun Registrations: What You Need to Know!

KEY ISSUES

• Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts offline due to security issues beginning November 3rd, 2024
• Originally estimated 1-week outage, now going on 13-days
• Gun dealers unable to complete applications with the State Patrol Firearms Background Division
• Legal action to be taken if outage continues to delay firearm registrations

WAAOC Effect on the Gun Dealer Applications

Within the United States the Second Amendment is a key topic of today’s person right to protect and right to bear arms. Now, this being such a pivotal piece of the American way of life, you would think that ‘computer difficulties’ would not be able to cripple an entire state’s ability to fulfill this constitutional right. But, for Washington State, this is the case due to what is being described as ‘unauthorized activity’ within the Washington State Administrative Office of the Courts.

National Instant Criminal Background Check System

Since November 1^st, all legal gun purchases have been halted due to the computer systems connected to the process of purchasing a firearm, Secure Automated Firearms E-Check (SAFE), has been compromised. This technical program outage has caused a backup in applications, when Washington State could simply process through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) system (NICS).

Employees had experienced the system outage, and instead of figuring out how to circumvent the issue, the entire system was shut down making it impossible for gun dealers to run background checks. Now, private sales are outlawed in Washington State, as a result all legal avenues of purchasing and selling a gun have been shut down.

Seattle Times has reported that even the associate director for the WAAOC was unable to disclose the cause of the outage due to specific security protocols. “due to cautions, we proactively shut down the systems to secure our source. We are working around the clock with our team to bring the AOC Odyssey portal back online as soon as possible,” Wendy Ferrell.

Originally, officials estimated the AOC Odyssey portal would be down one week. Going on 12-days now the system is still offline. It appears that the WAAOC is not have any sense of urgency to return the portal to working order.

Demands by the Washington State Patrol’s Office

Kevin Baird, Washington State Patrol assistant commander of the State Patrol’s Firearm Background Division last week issued communication to all gun dealers around Washington State.

“We are effectively on hold and any applications submitted November 1^st onward, until the system is back online will not be processed. Until then, we cannot make any determinations on any checks. Currently, we are working through the backlog of applications pre-November 1^st. But these could also be delayed as well due to the system outage. We will do our very best to return checks completed within 10-business days.”

Larry Keane, the Senior VP and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) insisted that state officials move the NICS program for a “sufficient alternative to maintain both security and access.” He did echo the statement with a warning that the outage would not be tolerated after a center duration (NSSF).

Coupled, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) also followed the NICS’ actions vowed legal action if this issue was not solved in a timely manner. Using phrase like “simply unacceptable” and “Washington citizens have the constitutional right to firearms,” claiming legal action is the only remedy if the outage continues.

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