The Los Angeles County Superior Court has revealed 147,000 cases of felony convictions were not successfully reported to the California Department of Justice. The public notice of the backlog of errors was posted on February 24, 2026. Because they were not reported, they were not included in the National Instant background Check System (NICS) criminal history records. It is possible some convicted felons were able to obtain firearms through licensed dealers because of this oversight. From lacourt.org:
Of the approximately 464,000 impacted cases, the Court has identified approximately 380,000 instances with convictions where the case’s ADR was not successfully reported to the DOJ. Of those, roughly 147,000 involved cases with felony convictions, and roughly 233,000 were cases with misdemeanor convictions. Approximately 84,000 cases were dismissals in which ADRs were not successfully reported to the DOJ. Of those, roughly 61,000 involved felony dismissals, and roughly 23,000 involved misdemeanor dismissals.
The convictions are being transmitted to the DOJ at the present time. Most of the records occurred from the 1980's to 2006. Some of the records are as late as 2023.
About 18% of the records are of cases being dismissed. These could have consequences for things such as criminal history checks. Such checks often include arrests. Without the record of a dismissal of charges, it would become more difficult for an individual to show he was not convicted of a crime.
This correspondent has not found any indication if the California Department of Justice will be doing checks to see if any firearms were transferred to people with felony convictions.
Analysis: Los Angeles County Superior Court handles court cases for a bit less than 10 million people. These cases are mostly from a period of over 20 years, more than 20 years ago. The average number of felony convictions in the United States over that period was about 500 per 100,000 adults per year. The average is probably higher in California, but assuming the national average, we would expect about 50,000 felony convictions per year, or about 1.15 million convictions over the 23 year period. Given these back of the envelope estimates, roughly 1 in 8 felony convictions in the period, in Los Angeles County were not input properly. This does not engender faith in the criminal justice system. Bad record keeping is what one expects in third world countries. This shows, in spite of platitudes about how important it is to keep guns away from those who should not have them, the actual performance of doing so was not a very high priority.
This correspondent does not believe it should be the highest priority, because such laws are of marginal use against violent criminals. They are primarily used to convince those who desire to follow the law they should not acquire firearms. Such an attempt does not work well. In Australia, when extreme gun control measures were put into effect, the population followed the arcane and difficult rules, but increased the number of firearms owned, per capita, anyway. People will go to considerable trouble to obtain legal firearms when they have the desire to have them. Australian bureaucracy followed the rules. The number of firearms owned increased. Those who hate an armed population were outraged. Now they are proposing even more restrictions. Rule-following is not what those who want the people disarmed desire. They want the people disarmed.
It is good to see proper record keeping. Bad record keeping undermines faith in government. Given the allegations of corrupt politics in California, and especially in Los Angeles, this correspondent has to wonder if any of the "mistakes" were "helped" by a "helpful" clerical staff. This correspondent has not seen any evidence of such "help". The more people see the state as corrupt or even bumbling, the more they see the value of an armed population.
©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.
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