For about three weeks, gun stores in Nevada could not sell guns to most people looking to purchase.
The state is still dealing with the repercussions of the cyberattack. However, on Sunday morning, more systems were back online.
Governor Joe Lombardo's Office said on Sunday that the Brady Firearms Unit background check system has been restored.
During the time that the system was down, if people didn't have a concealed weapons permit, they could not buy a gun because the state requires background checks to be done first.
"We kind of had to revert back almost to the COVID era time where there was no processing of backgrounds," said Marcus Hodges, Assistant General Manager, Reno Guns & Range. "And so, we had a table of guns piling up and unfortunately couldn't just quickly get those into the customers' hands."
Reno Guns & Range said it did impact money going into its pockets.
"We did have a number of customers that I'm aware of that just decided not to purchase at this point in time," Hodges said. "So, we have potential lost sales that did occur."
Hodges said that it wasn't too concerning for the business because he said they were willing to wait. However, others are feeling the squeeze.
"We're pretty small," said Greg Tobin, Owner, Reno Bulk Ammo. "I mean, we're probably the smallest in northern Nevada. Probably at least anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 [was lost]."
For small businesses like Tobin's, that money helps a lot, but he runs multiple businesses out of his complex, so he says they are okay.
When systems were back online, both stores got straight to work.
"We're only open Tuesday through Saturday, but what we did, you know, just to conduct good business, was we came here actually, Sunday morning and jumped online and submitted all the backgrounds that we've been waiting to try to process," Tobin said.
"When the system came back online, we dedicated an employee to inputting all of those backgrounds. They were processed through," Hodges said. "We finished up some this morning. As soon as we're getting back the proceeds, we're able to contact customers and whatnot. They can come and pick up their firearms."
Hindsight is always 20/20, but both men said they feel the state should look at other avenues to help them out.
"The hope is that there would be consideration from the state to figure out a backup process on this, because there was no guarantee when the incident happened that it was going to be corrected in any quick time frame," Hodges said.
"I'd really love to see some sort of credit or some sort of, you know, find something financially done for us gun shops for those three weeks," Tobin said. "Not so much, you know, hey, give us a bunch of free money, but, like, how about let us run backgrounds for the month for free and not charge us those $25 to kind of recoup some of our losses."
A spokesperson with the Governor's Office says that the background checks and fingerprinting process for employment is also restored.
