Florida Didn’t Conduct Concealed Weapons Background Checks for a Year: Report

The state of Florida failed to conduct background checks for concealed weapons permits for over a year because the employee tasked with doing them “could not log into the system,” according to the Tampa Bay Times. An inspector general report notes that the state “stopped using a FBI crime database” in February 2016 and the problem went “unresolved” until March 2017, when another employee noticed the issue—meaning that over a year’s worth of concealed carry permits were given out without verification that the applicants did not have a “disqualifying history in other states.” The state saw a “historic spike in applications” for concealed permits, and the time frame coincides with the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that killed 50 in 2016. In 2016, 245,000 people applied for the permit, and another 275,000 applied in 2017. According to the IG, the employee involved reported the log-in issues only once and never mentioned them again. A department spokesperson was “immediately terminated” and has since “implemented safeguards to prevent this from happening again.”