FBI official considers his division's role in possible gun law reform

Jun. 18—FAIRMONT — Even for some of the most seasoned veterans, guns are a point of anxiety.

"If you were to ask me what keeps me awake at night, I'd tell you mental health, threats to life, school shootings and firearms," said Mike Christman, assistant director of the FBI's CJIS division in Clarksburg.

The staff inside the FBI's 990-acre campus just off of Interstate 79 cover a wide range of jobs and duties within the federal government's web of law enforcement, but the Criminal Justice Information Services is a point of pride for West Virginia.

The CJIS division is where all the government's law enforcement databases are created, developed and maintained. Two of the most used services that are housed in Clarksburg are the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, referred to as the NICS Indices.

On the national scale, there are already 19 states and Washington D.C. that have enacted "red flag laws" which are designed to prohibit individuals who trigger certain criteria from purchasing a firearm. The criteria vary from state-to-state, but what remains the same are the systems used to determine those factors.

The NCIC is a broad system that is used by law enforcement to find information such as outstanding warrants and criminal history. The NICS Indices is only accessible by FBI personnel, and it contains a vast range of what Christman calls "prohibiting information," including matters regarding civil petitions, such as a family member or health care worker claiming someone is a danger to themselves or others, or may have mental health concerns.

"The NICS Indices is a database the contains all kinds of prohibiting information," Christman said. "The NCIC collects information from criminal court... while the NICS Indices collects from civil court as well."

In the aftermath of the shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo New York, the conversation around gun law reform has swirled and has even garnered bipartisan support.

Currently, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington all have some form of red flag law enacted at the state level, but a federal law would shake things up.

Last week, a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators came forward with a framework for potential legislation, including, "needed mental health resources, improved school safety and support for students, and help ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can't purchase weapons."

But do these laws work? A study released by the FBI investigated the behaviors of mass shooters between 2000 and 2013. The study examined 63 active shooters and broke down claims about their behavior they made prior to each shooting. The study found that 39 of the 63 shooters had mental health concerns prior to the incident.

The authors of the study are quick to point out that, "There are important and complex considerations regarding mental health, both because it is the most prevalent stressor and because of the common but erroneous inclination to assume that anyone who commits an active shooting must de facto be mentally ill."

Most of the red flag laws that are currently in place at the state level are called Extreme Risk Protection Orders and these put an emphasis on mental health concerns but focus on many other factors that are tracked by the FBI's databases.

A 2019 case study that reviewed the California's ERPO laws found at least 21 cases in which ERPOs were used to disarm people who threatened mass shootings, including a car dealership employee who threatened to shoot up his workplace and a high school student who threatened to commit a mass shooting at a school assembly.

With the FBI's ability to track mental health petitions and concerns through the NICS Indices while working in tandem with the NCIC's criminal database, a federal-level ERPO would be sure to change the way background checks are conducted.

"These sorts of law would deficiently affect what we do here, and I would say that any political or social change affects the volume of transactions we see on a daily basis," Christman said. "Red flag laws are nothing new... when you're in the business that we're in, and one side of the building we take tips from the public and on the other we do background checks, it's hard not to see that possible synergy."

Reach David Kirk at 304-367-2522 or by email at dkirk@timeswv.com.