Rep. Joel Rudman calls for shorter background check wait times for gun purchases

SHALIMAR, Fla. (FLV) – Rep. Joel Rudman, R-Navarre, said he wants to propose legislation to limit the length of time it takes for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to review a background check in order to purchase a firearm.

Rudman spoke at the ATF Accountability Field Hearing, which was hosted on Monday in Okaloosa County by U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.

Various Second Amendment activists and residents of northwest Florida came to listen and speak on the issue of gun rights at the federal and state level.

Rudman used the opportunity to outline his future legislative policy proposal that would shorten the amount of time it takes for the government to review an individual’s background check.

“If I’m trying to purchase a firearm and I come up as a false positive, and the statute in Florida says they can take as long as they need to to clarify the situation, there’s no incentive for FLDE to hurry up,” Rudman said.

Rudman said that most of the cases where it takes Floridians lengthy amounts of time to have their background checks approved, they involved individuals who had just moved to Florida from states where firearms are heavily regulated.

“California is the hardest state to get background check information from,” he said. “Apparently, whoever does things in California, they answer 100 phone calls a day.

“So if you’re caller number 101, they hang up on you and you’ve got to try again tomorrow,” he continued.

Rudman promised to do everything he could to “not restrict people’s Second Amendment rights.”

“Whatever we need to do to get that background check done in a reasonable amount of time. Not two years, but three days,” the lawmaker said.

Rudman’s proposal would remove the Marjory Stoneman Douglas public safety act requirements of creating a minimum three day waiting period for someone to receive a response on their background check.

He concluded by sharing how speeding up the background check process would not be something new or ineffective.

“All we’re asking is that they turn the calendar back to 2018,” he said. “This was the law of the land in the state of Florida prior to Marjory Stoneman Douglas. So we’re not asking for something we’ve never had before. We’re asking to go back to how things used to be.”