For more than a year, Florida failed to do national background checks that could have disqualified people from gaining a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The lapse was revealed in an internal report on Friday and it happened during a time period when there was a large surge in the number of people seeking permission to legally carry a concealed weapon in Florida. The Tampa Bay Times reported that the state failed to check the National Instant Criminal Background Check System from February 2016 to March 2017.
An investigation began in March, 2017 after a state employee noted the state was not getting any correspondence from people whose applications had been rejected due to information from the national database. Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam blamed the problem on the negligence of a department employee. The employee being blamed for all this is quoted in the report as saying that she “dropped the ball.” She also told them she was working in the mail room when she was given oversight of the database in 2013. “I didn’t understand why I was put in charge of it.”
For more: AP News