Original article can be found here.
Patrick Tate Adamiak and Pastor Russell Fincher received full presidential pardons in September. Both men then tried to buy firearms. FBI NICS checks denied the purchases. The denials hit Trump clemency recipients after the pardons were already granted. A full pardon is an Article II act of the President. It is finished business. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System still treated them as barred.
The Second Amendment Foundation reports that prohibited-person records have not been updated to reflect the presidential pardons. That is why the checks failed. NICS still lists Adamiak and Fincher as people who cannot buy guns. The Foundation is not describing a new statute. It is describing a federal file that does not match clemency already issued. Until that file changes, the transfers stop.
NICS is the FBI system used to screen firearm buyers. A deny ends the sale. When prohibited-person records ignore a full pardon, the system keeps returning a deny to people the President has restored. The buyers are not the problem. The uncorrected records are the problem. A lag in a federal list is doing the work of a prohibition the pardon already lifted.
Adamiak and Fincher submitted to the background check the law requires and were blocked anyway. Their names are public. Their pardons are full. The Second Amendment Foundation’s account is specific: the prohibited-person records have not been updated. That gap is not a constitutional gray area. It is an administrative failure sitting on top of a restored right.
The Second Amendment is the right at stake. Background-check statutes exist to keep firearms from people the law actually prohibits. They do not authorize the FBI to treat a fully pardoned citizen as a prohibited person after the President has acted. When a database collides with the Constitution, the Constitution controls. Article II pardons are not advisory memos to the Bureau.
Officials who run NICS take oaths to the Constitution. Those oaths do not include leaving dead disabilities in a federal list. Adamiak and Fincher remain unable to complete gun purchases while the records lag behind the September pardons. Rights do not resume when a clerk feels ready. They resume when the disability ends.
The FBI must update the prohibited-person records so they reflect the pardons already granted. Until that happens, NICS will keep blocking lawful buys by fully pardoned Trump clemency recipients. The right to keep and bear arms follows the pardon, not the lag in a federal file.
References
- https://saf.org/presidential-pardon-recipients-still-barred-from-buying-guns/
- https://www.downrangeco.com/news/presidential-pardon-recipients-still-barred-from-buying-guns-c605da
- https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2026/10/28/apparently-nics-hasnt-gotten-word-of-presidential-pardons-n1234280
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