Article Info
LA Court Lost 147,000 Felony Records
| Scope | |
|---|---|
| Jurisdiction | California |
| Impact | national |
| Key Entities | |
| Court responsible for the reporting failure | Los Angeles County Superior Court |
| State agency that should have received the conviction records | California Department of Justice |
| Federal background check system that relied on the missing records | FBI NICS |
| What It Means | |
| |
| Timeline | |
| February 24, 2026 | LA County Superior Court posted public notice of the reporting backlog |
| March 2026 | Court begins transmitting backlogged conviction records to California DOJ |
LA Court Lost 147,000 Felony Records
A decades-long reporting failure kept convicted felons out of NICS—and nobody's checking whether they bought guns
From The Boise Gun Club Handbook
The Los Angeles County Superior Court quietly admitted it failed to report 147,000 felony convictions to the California DOJ—meaning none of them hit the federal background check database.
Driving the news: The court posted a public notice February 24, 2026, disclosing that roughly 464,000 total cases were never successfully transmitted to the DOJ via Automated Disposition Reports (ADRs). The felony convictions are the headline number, but the full scope is wider.
By the numbers:
- ~147,000 felony convictions unreported to DOJ and absent from NICS
- ~233,000 misdemeanor convictions also missing
- ~61,000 felony dismissals not reported—creating the opposite problem for cleared individuals trying to prove their record
- Records span roughly 1980 to 2023, with most predating 2006
The court serves 9.8 million people. Running rough math against national felony conviction rates, the unreported felonies represent something like 1 in 8 convictions from that era in LA County that never made it into the system. That's not a rounding error. That's a structural failure.
Reality check: There is no announced plan—from the California DOJ or anyone else—to cross-reference those 147,000 names against firearm purchase records to determine whether any prohibited persons cleared a NICS check they shouldn't have passed. The convictions are being transmitted now, which closes the hole going forward. What happened in the gap is apparently nobody's immediate problem.
Between the lines: California has built one of the most layered gun-purchase bureaucracies in the country—10-day waits, dealer-only transfers, Dealer Record of Sale submissions, Armed Prohibited Persons System enforcement. The argument for all of it rests on the premise that the underlying records are accurate. They weren't. For decades.
The court has identified approximately 380,000 instances with convictions where the case's ADR was not successfully reported to the DOJ.
What Idaho owners should know: This doesn't directly change Idaho law or affect purchases here. But NICS is a national system fed by state-level reporting. When a state's courts fail to submit records, the gaps don't stay local—they become federal gaps. Any dealer anywhere running a check against an LA County felon from this period may have gotten a clean return.
The bottom line: Background checks are only as good as the records behind them. If the records aren't there, the check is theater.
- Phils Custom Handloads(Swartz Creek, MI)
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- J & L Gunsmithing(Chesapeake, VA)
- Oliver Firearms(Spartanburg, SC)
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