How many John Smiths are there in the United States? One would imagine a whole bunch! Background checks run on two main identifiers. Name and Date of Birth. So if John Smith with a DOB of 12/10/1982 goes to NCIC for a background check what are the odds that they look up the wrong John Smith? Fact is it’s pretty good. Here is an example.

Regular customer comes in and purchases a firearm. Now this state does not have any exception for carry permits so this customer is going to have a background check run before they can leave with the firearm. Keep in mind you have sold this customer a gun over and over with no issue. You enter in all the information and poof DENIED.

So you have two options. Send the customer away with the appeal paperwork in hand or based on your knowledge of the individual you can run them again except this time ask them to provide a social security number. This will help narrow down the John Smith with a DOB of 12/10/1982 WITH the SSN of 123456789 now we have a match and its a PROCEED. In this situation it is suggested that you print out both the denied and proceed and attach them to the transaction documentation in the event you have to explain why you did two background checks.

It is also not uncommon to “fat finger” something and get a denial. A wrong date of birth or even the spelling on a name can result in the wrong individual from popping up and getting denied. In situations where this happens run them again. Print out or document what you did different between the denied and proceed and keep it for your records.

This is one of the great features of EzOnlineFFL all the information is entered one time. If there is a mistake you correct it and resubmit it. No starting over, no entering the same information in another system.