Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

My name is Robin Ball. I own a large indoor shooting range in Spokane, Washington. My business opened five years ago next month. In addition to the shooting range, we provide training for several shooting disciplines including hunter education, personal defense, armed security, law enforcement, and junior pistol safety. We have a large retail facility where we are federally licensed dealers in handguns, rifles, shotguns and accessories. All of our firearms sales are subject to background checks; checks on rifles and shotguns are conducted through the FBI, while checks on handguns are conducted through both the FBI and the Spokane Police Department.

I am a certified instructor for home safety, personal protection, and Refuse to be a Victim, an NRA safety class that is not firearms related. In addition to the classes at my business, I teach Refuse to be a Victim, at our local community college and several area high schools. I am a member of the National Rifle Association and an executive committee member for the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s range development program. In addition to the NRA and National Shooting Sports Foundation, I am a spokesperson for Second Amendment Sisters.

Today, I am not speaking for any of those organizations; I am here to describe how the problems in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) affect those of us licensed to deal in firearms, and our customers. Through my business and volunteer contacts, I do keep in touch with dealers not only in my area but in all parts of the country.

From personal experience in running my business and in the contacts I have in other locations, I can truthfully say, I understand the serious frustrations licensed dealers and law-abiding citizens are feeling about the NICS program. Delays, outages, and recorded messages have a very negative impact on the process of doing business. Customers know the system is supposed to be instant and can’t understand why they get delayed. I don’t want to include any information regarding denied transactions because we have only seen one denied transaction since NICS has been in operation. If we are a typical dealer then numbers on attempted transfers to felons are being terribly inflated.

Outages shut down the legal commerce my business is licensed to do. Customer service is very important to us and we look incompetent when the federal system does not work the way it was intended. It is not uncommon for a customer to cancel the purchase and leave. Though we are not responsible, the blame rests with the dealer. We send an angry customer away who can’t complete a transfer, not because of being ineligible to own a gun but because the government’s system is incomplete or unreliable. My best advertising is word of mouth and this does not leave a good impression.

We have been told by NICS customer service staff that delays are often a result of the computer not having the information needed. In private enterprise, this is not tolerated. If the system is broken, you fix it or your business fails.

The failure of NICS to do the job it is supposed to do appears to be getting worse instead of better. Dealers expected problems in the beginning, because of the start up of the new system. I believe most dealers were pretty patient. In the beginning, we had fewer delays, and fewer total shut downs of the system. Certainly nothing in the early months of operation of NICS compares to the terrible delays we have experienced recently.

The cost to my business is difficult to measure. We have experienced lost sales because purchasers are frustrated and don’t want to wait for NICS to function again, or they live out of the city in a rural area and have come to Spokane for a day of shopping. Many feel it is better to wait when the system malfunctions than to continue the process and come back to Spokane to pick their purchase up after we have cleared it. Outages make us look bad and frustrated customers will share that with their friends.

One of the biggest frustrations that we experience is when a customer already has a concealed carry permit for the state of Washington, and still gets delayed because the information in NICS is not up to date. Washington is a point of contact state. Certain carry permits, depending on their expiration dates, do not require us to call NICS. But people who have a permit have all been through a background check and don’t understand why they get caught in the fray when NICS breaks down. I don’t have a logical explanation to give the customers. I have a customer who has served this country in the military, was honorably discharged, is a responsible parent who has taught his son gun safety, and has a carry permit. He has purchased several guns from us since the NICS system was implemented and gets delayed every time because the FBI has yet to update information in the NICS database.

One area that cannot be overlooked is the self-defense issue. I work with domestic violence issues all the time. I have women with restraining orders against violent ex-husbands or ex-boyfriends who have reached their breaking point. They don’t want to die and have only one choice – to defend their lives and the lives of their children. When NICS is out of service, we are left with no option but to tell this person whose life has been threatened, “Sorry, we don’t know when NICS will be working again,” or “Come back in three days.” The common response is “I might be dead by then.” You read the papers and see the news, you know these issues exist in every part of our country. The only way to level the playing field, for a women, who is threatened by a man, is to learn to defend themselves, and if a woman chooses to do so with a firearm, she shouldn’t be put in danger by a computer failure or a bureaucratic mixup.

Saturday, I taught a class. Normally I don’t allow young children to sit in my handgun classes but a women came in with an eight year old girl. My instinct told me to let her be. This little girl sat quietly and colored through the entire class. At the end of the class, I was talking with her mom, the little girl was right there, and her mom told me that she wanted to learn what her options were because her ex-husband is getting released from jail at the end of the month and he has threatened to kill her and her daughter. The threats have been reported but there is nothing that can be done until such time as he harms her. She told me she has thought about moving but her daughter loves her school so much she has put that decision off. Her daughter spoke up and said, “I don’t mind moving Mommy, I don’t want you to get hurt.” The mom asked me how long it would take to buy a gun. I had to tell her, she better plan ahead, because there are no guarantees we can get a background check processed in less than a week. She was hoping to wait until payday. Here is a classic case of a parent trying to do the right thing under very difficult circumstances.

Most dealers do not have a problem with background checks. No one wants to keep guns out of the wrong hands more than gun owners. After all, the press and many politicians go after us, the law-abiding, hard working gun owners and firearms businesses, whenever a crime occurs. Somehow, it seems illogical to me to chastise businesses like mine instead of the criminal. Clean up the system and the government stands to gain a lot: confidence among dealers that the system works, and confidence among gun owners that the FBI isn’t retaining records on customers.

I don’t buy into conspiracy theories, but if a government program like NICS works as designed, there should be less distrust of the government and its programs in general. It seems to me that it is in the best interest of any elected official at the federal level to make sure the government operations that you mandate work properly. Customers may blame the dealer because we are the closest people to yell at, but the responsibility lies with the government and the lack of determination to fix these problems only increases that distrust.

Thank you very much for your interest in improving this system, and thank you for inviting me to testify today.