Gun shops say federal background checks work, but it’s difficult to know who is in the country lawfully.
PHOENIX—The FBI logged more than 47,000 attempts by illegal aliens to purchase firearms at gun shops over the past 25 years, according to a group that monitors border security policy.
On Jan. 2, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported the FBI currently has almost 14 million records of firearms applications that failed a national background check.
Of these “unique prohibiting events,” the FBI index included 47,930 denied purchases of firearms by illegal aliens in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) between November 1998 and November 2023.
“While the 13.9 million unique prohibiting events cataloged in the FBI database represent events—not individual illegal aliens—the data point to large numbers of migrants in the market for firearms. Whatever the total may be, one is one too many,” FAIR wrote.
The organization added that “the dangers posed by largely unvetted illegal aliens possessing firearms has been vastly exacerbated over the past three years, as the Biden administration has presided over record numbers of new illegal aliens entering our country.
“At the same time, federal policies and the proliferation of sanctuary jurisdictions that prohibit the sharing of critical law enforcement information will inevitably result in more Americans falling prey to criminal aliens.”
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), there were 547,610 seizures of illegal weapons, including ammunition, gun parts, scopes, silencers, and body armor in 2023, which is consistent with the 595,154 total number of weapons seized in 2021.
In 2022, there were 1,147,497 weapons seizures, according to CBP data.
The Epoch Times has reached out for comment to the FBI, the Department of Justice (DOJ), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) but has not received responses.
By Allan Stein
