WA State’s Court IT Issues Hold Up Hundreds of Gun Sales

Back on November 5th. we reported the WA State court system was experiencing issues due to what authorities called "unauthorized activity" in their IT system.

  Now, these issues are holding up gun purchases

The WA State Administrative Office of the Courts, or AOC, reported they detected what they called "unauthorized activity" in their systems, and as a precaution, they shut some of them down. However, they stopped short of calling it a hack. But, they said issues could last for days.

Besides interrupting court scheduling and logistical tasks, now these IT issues are slowing down firearm purchases in WA.

The IT system slowdowns are making it so the Washington State Patrol can't access the  Secure Automated Firearms E-Check system (or SAFEC) to perform mandated back round checks for firearm purchases. Normally, they process anywhere from 400 to 1,000 per day, for a variety of purposes.

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Court officials say they hope to have the slowdowns corrected and have the AOC back at full speed by next week, but they are not 100 percent sure.

The AOC and WSP are not the only ones affected, according to Big Country News:

"On Tuesday, the state Department of Children, Youth and Families issued a statement that the system outage “has been impacting our ability to complete background checks and likely will impact the hiring process for DCYF employees, providers, and foster parent applications.”