Outage Of PSP's Internet-Based Systems Brings Firearms Sales To Halt

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Pennsylvania State Police are experiencing an outage which is affecting its Internet–based systems.

According to a statement, the statewide outage is also affecting telephone and email systems at department headquarters in Harrisburg.

State Police expected the outage to last about six hours.

During the outage, licensed firearm dealers are unable to access the Pennsylvania Instant Check System.

There are 3,200 gun shops or gun dealers in the state of Pennsylvania and every one of them found the state's Instant Check System down Wednesday when they went to do online background checks on new firearm purchases.

"If the check is down, nobody is leaving with a firearm in general," said Nathan Carey, of Bullseye Firearms Gun Vault. "Doesn't matter if it's a hand or long gun, both are run through the Instant Check System."

Carey immediate felt the impact of the state system shoot down. Nine people came in to buy guns. Three decided to use layaway.

But the others, Carey says "they just left. I lost some sales… don't know if they'll come back or not."

Thousands of dollars gone because of a glitch.

At one point, it did come back up, but it didn't take long for the system to crash, again. That meant the firearms stayed in the rack and cash out of the drawer.

Carey says he understands this is the computer age and things like this happen. He just hopes the state can fix the situation to keep it from happening during a season like this when they do a lot of their sales.

Additionally, the Pennsylvania Access to Criminal History public site for criminal history record checks is down.

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