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SACRAMENTO

It starts with buying a specific firearm. Each handgun is submitted on its own form. Each purchase of a shotgun or shotguns gets submitted on a different form.

Once the purchase is made, the store’s salesman will ask for a driver’s license. If the address on the license isn’t current, that’s enough to deny the purchase. Got an unpaid speeding ticket or a failure to appear? That’s enough for the Justice Department to deny a firearm purchase too.

Once the basic “where do you live” type information is entered on the form, you’ll be asked what race you are.

First, there’s a place to indicate if the purchaser is Hispanic or not. Then a second question to indicate what race the purchaser is, if not Hispanic.

Answers to those questions aren’t grounds for denying a firearms purchase. But the answers to the next series of questions on the form is. These are questions about criminal history: Have you ever been convicted of a felony of a crime that could carry a sentence of a year or more? Have you ever been found mentally unstable in a court?

Once you’ve answer those questions and a few more on the form, the seller of the firearm will ask similar question, verbally.

“Are you a threat to yourself or others?” Greg Raabe of Shooters Warehouse asked when Fox40 reporter Ben Deci went through the background check.

All the information he collected goes to the Department of Justice. They have 10 days to deny the application.

No new is good news, Raabe said. He said applications are denied quite frequently.

“It’s a system that works,” Raabe said.

But it’s not a system that federal law currently requires at gun shows. And that puts brick-and-mortar store like Shooters Warehouse on unequal ground.