18 U.S.C. § 925A — Remedy for erroneous denial of firearm

This section gives a remedy to someone wrongly denied a firearm. It applies when a background check under section 922 blocked a sale. Two situations qualify. First, a state or local government gave wrong information about the person. So did the national instant criminal background check system, created under the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act. Second, the person actually was not barred from receiving a firearm under section 922(g) or (n). In either case, the person may sue. They can sue the state or local government that gave the wrong information or denied the sale. They can also sue the United States, whichever one caused the problem. The lawsuit asks a court for one of two orders. The court can order the wrong information to be corrected. Or the court can order the firearm transfer to be approved. The court has discretion in these cases. It may award the winning side a reasonable attorney's fee. That fee counts as part of the court costs.

The source credit indicates that this section was added by Public Law 103–159, title I, § 104(a), enacted November 30, 1993, and published at 107 Stat. 1543. The credit reflects a single legislative action establishing the provision, with no subsequent amendments noted in the record. Public Law 103–159 is commonly known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a statute generally understood to have established a national system for background checks on firearm purchasers, administered in coordination with state and local authorities and, later, the national instant criminal background check system referenced in the text itself. The Act is widely recognized as part of a broader legislative effort in the early 1990s to reduce access to firearms by individuals prohibited from possessing them, while creating procedural safeguards for lawful purchasers. Section 925A itself appears to respond to a foreseeable consequence of a background-check regime: the possibility that erroneous information, whether from state, local, or federal sources, could result in a lawful purchaser being wrongly denied a firearm. The commonly cited purpose of provisions like this is to afford such persons a judicial remedy to correct the record or compel approval of the transfer, and to permit fee-shifting to the prevailing party. Beyond this general understanding of the Brady Act's aims, the record does not establish the specific legislative reasoning behind the particular remedy structure or attorney's-fee provision in this section.