The FBI recorded more than 47,000 attempts by illegal immigrants to purchase firearms over the last 25 years.
Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) reported that between November 1998 and November 2023, there were “47,930 denials of firearm purchases to illegal/unlawful aliens involving the National Instant Criminal Background (NICS) system.”
“While the 13.9 million ‘unique prohibiting events’ cataloged in the FBI database represent events—not individual illegal aliens—the data point to large numbers of migrants in the market for firearms. Whatever the total may be, one is one too many,” FAIR wrote.
“The dangers posed by largely unvetted illegal aliens possessing firearms has been vastly exacerbated over the past three years, as the Biden administration has presided over record numbers of new illegal aliens entering our country,” the report added. “At the same time, federal policies and the proliferation of sanctuary jurisdictions that prohibit the sharing of critical law enforcement information will inevitably result in more Americans falling prey to criminal aliens.”
The report noted that in 2019, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would have required gun sellers to inform Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) when an illegal immigrant attempted to purchase a gun.
The bill did not pass in the Senate.
