Oregon's FY 2019 NARIP - Record Reconciliation Project

The NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007, P. L. 110-180 ("NIAA"), was initially signed into law by the President on January 8, 2008 (reauthorized by Title VI of the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018, P.L. 115-141). The NIAA amends the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993 ("the Brady Act") (Pub. L. 103-159), under which the Attorney General established the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The Brady Act requires Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) to contact the NICS before transferring a firearm to an unlicensed person for information on whether the proposed transferee is prohibited from receiving or possessing a firearm under state or federal law. The NIAA authorizes grants to be made in a manner consistent with the National Criminal History Improvement Program (NCHIP).

Under the 2019 NARIP priority areas, the Oregon State Police (OSP) will administer one project: NICS Contracted Record Reconciliation project to contact services to obtain missing or incomplete disposition records from Oregon courts and county District Attorney case outcomes. Currently, Oregon has over 700,000 individual CCH records with missing disposition and/or incomplete arrest cycle information. The primary target records for the project include felony and misdemeanor convictions, convictions involving domestic violence, stalking, drug arrests and convictions, and others which may disqualify an individual from possessing or receiving a firearm under federal or state law.

NICS Record Reconciliation Support: OSP will continue this project with a 2019 contracted team over the course of 24 months. The goal of the team is to ensure that all target records are made available to NICS either through NCIC, III, or the NICS Indices in the timeliest manner. In addition to the contracted services, OSP will hire one Operations and Policy Analyst to oversee all aspects of the contracted work to include monitoring the contractor deliverables, quality of records provided, statistical reports and progress, and the billing process of the work performed. Previously NARIP funded Record Reconciliation projects hired OSP staff to complete the project but turnover and the hiring process with background checks and training continually delayed the progress of the project. As a result, OSP began contracting the Record Reconciliation project with much greater success. The objective of the Record Reconciliation project is to ensure records are readily available for firearm transfer background checks in support of public safety nationwide. The contract services activities will be to locate and resolve as many incomplete records as possible, seek solutions to improve the overall record reporting process long term, review and revise current methods of assessing the overall status of repository record completeness, and prepare a NICS record improvement plan based on key issues, known or identified gaps, resource needs, and a proposed timeline for making changes.

(CA/NCF)