An audit of California’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has revealed that it is still facing a terrible backlog of persons who own guns but shouldn’t–and part of the reason for this is that it “failed over 18 months to fully implement seven of eight recommendations auditors made in 2013 to reduce backlogs.”

The Los Angeles Times reports that the DOJ is supposed to be cross-referencing a database of legal gun owners with databases of persons with “severe mental illness or criminal history.” In so doing, they are meant to locate people who legally purchased guns but afterwards became ineligible to possess them.

In the first quarter of 2015 alone, they had “about 3,600 reports in a daily queue of persons potentially prohibited from owning guns.” The goal was a queue containing 600. That gives Californians some idea of how far behind the DOJ has fallen.

The California DOJ–overseen by California Attorney General and U.S. Senatorial candidate Kamala Harris (D)–is “[blaming] the delays in part on loss of staff and the continued strong sales of firearms in California.”

Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff (R-San Dimas) was quoted as saying that “the Legislature gave Harris’ office $24 million nearly two years ago to clear the backlogs and received assurances it could be done within a year.” It wasn’t.

The recent audit of California’s DOJ shows there could be as many as “257,000 people from before 2006” alone who “own guns in violation of state law.”

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.