This is what you get when you let the state get in the middle of the NICS check process, not to mention the opportunity it gives the state to form a registry.
Pennsylvania State Police background check system crashes
Guns and ammunition have been flying off shelves at Lehigh Valley firearms businesses, just as supermarkets and other stores have been stripped bare by Americans panicked by the coronavirus crisis.
“I think everybody’s running scared, that’s pretty much it,” Eric Koehler, owner of Eagle Arms Sports Shop, said Wednesday from his Upper Macungie Township store, blaming in part the COVID-19. “The markets are collapsing, the virus is here, and blah blah. It’s just too many things for people to accept at one time, you know?”
Friends Teragah Serrano of Bethlehem and Stacy Toro of Allentown were among those shopping Wednesday afternoon at Eagle Arms.
Serrano, who bought a 9 mm and a .38-caliber handgun, joked, “I’m getting ready for the zombie apocalypse.”
Pennsylvanians are buying so many firearms that on Tuesday they crashed the state’s system for instant background checks.
Maj. Gary Dance, director of the Pennsylvania State Police Bureau of Records and Identification, said “technology challenges” and a surge in requests took the system offline.
“Despite the downtime, PICS completed 4,342 transactions on March 17, compared to 1,359 transactions on the corresponding Tuesday in March 2019,” Dance said in a statement.
That represents a 219% increase from a year ago.
Jan Rogers Kniffen, CEO of J. Rogers Kniffen World Wide Enterprises, said firearms sales are up 50%, while ammunition is up 65% in the United States since the pandemic hit.
A sample of area firearm store owners in the Lehigh Valley indicates the region is following the state and national spike in consumer purchases. At least two store owners, including Peter Ratajczyk, president and CEO of 507 Outfitters in Easton, said they were too busy Wednesday afternoon to answer questions, and others did not return email messages.
Dance said transactions include background checks for purchases, transfers, evidence returns and license-to-carry applications.
State police said the server issue was responsible for the outage from 8 to 11:30 a.m. Tuesday. A second outage happened 5-8:40 p.m., due to a backlog of requests.
“Pennsylvania State Police is working with its vendor to increase processing power to avoid future backlogs and will adjust staffing as needed to meet demand,” Dance said. “Rumors circulating on social media that PICS has been shut down as part of the commonwealth’s response to the COVID-19 epidemic are false. PICS is, and will remain, operational.”
The state’s instant check system is used by county sheriffs, police chiefs and licensed firearms dealers in Pennsylvania to determine an individual’s legal ability to get a license to carry firearms or obtain a firearm through a purchase or transfer.