CHL app in mail; NICS Denied!!!!! -- ruh-roh!!
Posted: Tue Sep 19, 2006 9:31 am
Plastic in hand -- 90 days, but not without a fight. I hope some can learn from my experience.
I live in Houston and last year during Katrina my wife and I decided we needed guns for the innevitable mayhem that would be sure to follow. I filled out my NICS app and was put on hold. I needed guns, like NOW!! They said it was probably because I was born overseas (dad in military). My wifes app went thru so we purchased an 870 and a sw686 6". I called back several days later to see if I was denied. The gun store owner said no. Great,,, Right????
So three months ago I decided to get my CHL. Took the class and all went well. My app was sent in by my instructor. A few weeks later I went to puchase a sidearm (well, if you call a sw460xvr a sidearm). DENIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Wow!!!. The store clerk said the only reason they do that is because you are a felon or he said they have you mixed up with someone else. Of course he had that look on his face like "right pal, you know you are a felon".
Anyway, I started my NICS appeal. NICS tells you nothing. The proccess is so slow it is unbelievable. I called NICS once everyday to see if a different person could tell me what was going on. Some of the NICS folks were dropping clues to me of what it could be. I was only arrested once in my life for DUI which got reduced to a Careless Driving (not Reckless). this was 15yrs ago. It was my mom's car i was borrowing. I was visiting from college. My mom kept her chemo drugs in the glove box of most of the family cars. Anyway, they found these and wanted my my to show them the prescriptions for them. She did and that was that. It took 24hrs to settle that up. No judge, no court, no nothing.
Anyway, found out later from NICS (not directly but from hints the various agents would give me that this was on my record as a felony conviction of a controlled substance.
So I had to get the deposition from the Court of Clerk and send it to NICS. Then I had to get the record changed from this states main database. Finally, I recieved a letter from NICS saying that I was once again in their good graces.
Done,,, right???? Mmmmmm, not quite. Remember the CHL. Ruh-roh!!
I was hoping that I was able to correct the record before my FBI background check came back to Austin. The same day I recieved my certificate from NICS I went to the DPS CHL website and it said-- DENIED!!. Oh Lord!!! Here we go again. I fell short on correcting my record by just 3 days.
So now I had to go thru this same process with DPS. I sent them all the forms and fingerprints (which i had to give to NICS btw). So now I wait. 90 days later I hear nothing. So I called last week and found out the agents name who was working on my file. I called her and went over my file with her. She said "Wow, that's some story". She said my liscnese would be mailed that day. I told her I was sorry for bothering her. She said she was actually glad i called because she would not have been able to decipher all this paper.
So that's my story. NICS said that I had possibly one of the fastest appeals in history (4 weeks). Usually takes 4 months. It is because I skipped a lot of their steps by calling so much and getting answers from the agents instead of waiting for their assesments and snail mails.
My assesment of what happened is that when I went to buy my gun last yr for Katrina their was a hold on me from NICS because their was not a resolution listed from my case 15yrs ago. Some lazy person at the states Department of Law Enforcement did not want to take the time and get the deposition from the Court of Clerk and just put it in as a conviction eventhough it was dropped immediately. This is what caused all my grief. (this was not Texas btw).
If I would have just sat back and let things go thru the normal hoops, it would have taken up to a yr to sort all this out.
The worst part was thinking of all the things in my past that I could have done wrong. Your mind starts playing with you. "Was that girl 17 or 18 when I was in grad school?" etc etc.
Thank goodness its over. I hope some can learn from what I went thru because there is not a lot on the internet about what you should do in that situation.
I live in Houston and last year during Katrina my wife and I decided we needed guns for the innevitable mayhem that would be sure to follow. I filled out my NICS app and was put on hold. I needed guns, like NOW!! They said it was probably because I was born overseas (dad in military). My wifes app went thru so we purchased an 870 and a sw686 6". I called back several days later to see if I was denied. The gun store owner said no. Great,,, Right????
So three months ago I decided to get my CHL. Took the class and all went well. My app was sent in by my instructor. A few weeks later I went to puchase a sidearm (well, if you call a sw460xvr a sidearm). DENIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Wow!!!. The store clerk said the only reason they do that is because you are a felon or he said they have you mixed up with someone else. Of course he had that look on his face like "right pal, you know you are a felon".
Anyway, I started my NICS appeal. NICS tells you nothing. The proccess is so slow it is unbelievable. I called NICS once everyday to see if a different person could tell me what was going on. Some of the NICS folks were dropping clues to me of what it could be. I was only arrested once in my life for DUI which got reduced to a Careless Driving (not Reckless). this was 15yrs ago. It was my mom's car i was borrowing. I was visiting from college. My mom kept her chemo drugs in the glove box of most of the family cars. Anyway, they found these and wanted my my to show them the prescriptions for them. She did and that was that. It took 24hrs to settle that up. No judge, no court, no nothing.
Anyway, found out later from NICS (not directly but from hints the various agents would give me that this was on my record as a felony conviction of a controlled substance.
So I had to get the deposition from the Court of Clerk and send it to NICS. Then I had to get the record changed from this states main database. Finally, I recieved a letter from NICS saying that I was once again in their good graces.
Done,,, right???? Mmmmmm, not quite. Remember the CHL. Ruh-roh!!
I was hoping that I was able to correct the record before my FBI background check came back to Austin. The same day I recieved my certificate from NICS I went to the DPS CHL website and it said-- DENIED!!. Oh Lord!!! Here we go again. I fell short on correcting my record by just 3 days.
So now I had to go thru this same process with DPS. I sent them all the forms and fingerprints (which i had to give to NICS btw). So now I wait. 90 days later I hear nothing. So I called last week and found out the agents name who was working on my file. I called her and went over my file with her. She said "Wow, that's some story". She said my liscnese would be mailed that day. I told her I was sorry for bothering her. She said she was actually glad i called because she would not have been able to decipher all this paper.
So that's my story. NICS said that I had possibly one of the fastest appeals in history (4 weeks). Usually takes 4 months. It is because I skipped a lot of their steps by calling so much and getting answers from the agents instead of waiting for their assesments and snail mails.
My assesment of what happened is that when I went to buy my gun last yr for Katrina their was a hold on me from NICS because their was not a resolution listed from my case 15yrs ago. Some lazy person at the states Department of Law Enforcement did not want to take the time and get the deposition from the Court of Clerk and just put it in as a conviction eventhough it was dropped immediately. This is what caused all my grief. (this was not Texas btw).
If I would have just sat back and let things go thru the normal hoops, it would have taken up to a yr to sort all this out.
The worst part was thinking of all the things in my past that I could have done wrong. Your mind starts playing with you. "Was that girl 17 or 18 when I was in grad school?" etc etc.
Thank goodness its over. I hope some can learn from what I went thru because there is not a lot on the internet about what you should do in that situation.
