Only about 4 percent of people who try to buy a gun in Tennessee are snagged by background checks, reports The Commercial Appeal – while giving an example of a woman who tried to buy a pistol and wound up being arrested on four outstanding warrants.
Of those applicants who fail the initial background check, 30 percent clear up the problems during an appeal. Easy access to guns is being addressed at the state and national level now in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., in which 20 children and six adults were killed. In that case, Adam Lanza stole his mother’s .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle and killed her before the rampage.
Last year, 18,023 would-be gun owners failed a background check in Tennessee. Of those who failed, 9,937 appealed the decision and less than half — or 4,581 — still failed a second check.
TICS state records show 449,479 Tennesseans were ultimately approved to buy 509,983 firearms from licensed dealers last year. The sales jumped drastically in December, when 80,169 buyers were approved to buy 88,289 firearms. The numbers don’t reflect the untold thousands of private sales.