New York’s New Background Check System
NSSF Working to Get Answers

On Friday, NSSF^® had a call with the Deputy Secretary for Public Safety concerning New York state becoming a point of contact state and completely changing the process retailers have become accustomed to. This call follows a webinar put on by the New York State Police earlier in the month describing the transition to a point of contact state. While there are many questions still outstanding, NSSF is doing their best to act as an intermediary during these challenging times for retailers. Unfortunately, the process has been done without input from the firearm industry and will most likely cause severe impacts to your daily business.

Our goal is to try to continue to educate retailers about the impending transition because at this point, we have learned that the communication from the state has not been the greatest. It has also come to our attention that FBI NICS has been sending emails to retailers to inform them of the changes and the steps that retailers need to take to register with the NYSP in order to run firearm and ammunition background checks.

The NYSP have explained to NSSF that there will be a more extensive document guiding you through the process that will be ready by the end of this week – we will send it along to members when we receive it.

Below is the text of New York’s Letter to Dealers concerning the registration process, which you should have hopefully already received. We would like to ask all retailers to take the time to follow the process and register your store and employees so that you will not experience any self-imposed delays on September 13th.

NSSF continues to encourage New York state to make sure they have contingency plans in place for the inevitable delays and impacts to your business that will most likely occur with the new changes. While the state police is your ultimate authority, please let NSSF know of any issues that go unanswered so that we may try to assist you. Please contact us with these issues.
 

To: New York State Firearm Dealers and Ammunition Sellers

Pursuant to Executive Law § 228, New York has been designated a Point of Contact state for the purpose of processing National Instant Background Check (“NICS”) transactions. This means that starting on September 13, 2023, background check requests for firearm, rifle, shotgun, and ammunition purchases will be submitted to the New York State Police, and dealers will no longer submit requests directly to FBI NICS.

As a dealer, you and your staff will be required to register on the NYSNICS.ny.gov web application in advance of New York becoming a Point of Contact State. Instructions on the registration process will be posted on the https://NYSNICS.ny.gov site.

Effective September 13, 2023, prior to transferring a firearm, rifle, shotgun, or ammunition to a purchaser, you must go to https://NYSNICS.ny.gov to complete the background check process.

An Interactive Voice Response (IVR) telephone solution will be implemented as well so you may call in a background check request to 1-877-NYS-NICS should the online system be unavailable. To use this functionality, you must have already set up your business’ online profile and have a saved payment method on file in the NYSNICS application which you can register and login to at https://NYSNICS.ny.gov.

Please visit https://NYSNICS.ny.gov for more details about Point of Contact.