4 ms·

Or the ATF maintaining an illegal registry of 900 million firearms.

kmeisthax 5y ago
AFAIK, it's not illegal. The compromise on gun registration was that gun shops retain the registration data. The ATF only gets ownership over that data if the shop goes out of business. The only legal restriction is that they can't index it with a computer... which is stupid and silly, but hey, I don't write the laws.
- technothrasher 5y ago
  And it isn't 900 million firearms. It is ~900 million firearm dealer transactions, over 50 years.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  A computerized index is easily lost or stolen. It is more difficult to steal a warehouse of paper.
  - shadowgovt 5y ago
    It is, of course, also more difficult to use a warehouse of paper [1]. Requests against that information can take hours to process. There are over a thousand requests a day. As a federal job-creation program, congratulations I guess, but what a waste of human time. https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-databases/ https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-database... [1] ... technically, the data is, in fact, digitally stored so that an electronic equivalent of microfiche-scanning can be used to find information. That scanning is still done by hand because of the 1986 law banning registry creation.
    - CheezeIt 5y ago
      The purpose is to protect Americans’ human rights.
      - shadowgovt 5y ago
        There is no human right to not have it discovered a person purchased a firearm that was later used in the commission of a crime. In the same sense that there is no human right to not have it discovered that a car that ran someone over is registered to a particular person, or that a plane that crashes into a neighborhood was scheduled to fly under a particular flight-plan and be operated by a particular pilot. In general, society (American society included) assigns additional responsibilities of care and auditing to ownership and operation of machines and equipment with a high probability of causing the death of a third party if they are mis-used.
      - kmeisthax 5y ago
        If you are implying that people have a right to privacy, sure; except American law makes far more important and sensitive information a matter of public record. Things like home and car ownership are entirely public as it is. While you could argue that this shouldn't be public, there's still valid reasons for those things to be tracked in a central database. Likewise, I can think of valid reasons for why the government would need to know who owns a particular gun. If you are implying that a lack of a functioning Form 4473 index protects the right to bear arms... I'm not sure I agree with that. If the federal government really got a bug up it's butt about banning private firearm ownership, they wouldn't need a Form 4473 index. They would just need to ban the manufacture and import of new firearms and/or ammunition, and let the now-grandfathered old weapons trickle out of the market - no need for a gun grab. This is how they banned fully-automatic weapons, after all. You can technically still buy them, but the cost of a grandfathered automatic weapon is so astronomical that you would never dream of actually firing it.
woodruffw 5y ago
Neither illegal nor a real "registry" in any useful sense, since they're not allowed to digitize or automatically index the paper records, which are frequently mangled or water damaged beyond discernibility[1]. Edit: the National Tracing Center is currently so burdened with paper copies that their floor is literally collapsing[2]. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-guns-get-traced https://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-gu... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/us/politics/atf-nra-guns.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/us/politics/atf-nra-guns....
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  IIUC, digitize yes, index no. Incoming records are photographed and stored into a non-indexed image repository (otherwise, using the data would be completely impractical because of the literally-collapsing-floor problem you mentioned).

AFAIK, it's not illegal. The compromise on gun registration was that gun shops retain the registration data. The ATF only gets ownership over that data if the shop goes out of business. The only legal restriction is that they can't index it with a computer... which is stupid and silly, but hey, I don't write the laws.

technothrasher 5y ago
And it isn't 900 million firearms. It is ~900 million firearm dealer transactions, over 50 years.
vorpalhex 5y ago
A computerized index is easily lost or stolen. It is more difficult to steal a warehouse of paper.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  It is, of course, also more difficult to use a warehouse of paper [1]. Requests against that information can take hours to process. There are over a thousand requests a day. As a federal job-creation program, congratulations I guess, but what a waste of human time. https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-databases/ https://www.thetrace.org/2016/08/atf-non-searchable-database... [1] ... technically, the data is, in fact, digitally stored so that an electronic equivalent of microfiche-scanning can be used to find information. That scanning is still done by hand because of the 1986 law banning registry creation.
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    The purpose is to protect Americans’ human rights.
    - shadowgovt 5y ago
      There is no human right to not have it discovered a person purchased a firearm that was later used in the commission of a crime. In the same sense that there is no human right to not have it discovered that a car that ran someone over is registered to a particular person, or that a plane that crashes into a neighborhood was scheduled to fly under a particular flight-plan and be operated by a particular pilot. In general, society (American society included) assigns additional responsibilities of care and auditing to ownership and operation of machines and equipment with a high probability of causing the death of a third party if they are mis-used.
    - kmeisthax 5y ago
      If you are implying that people have a right to privacy, sure; except American law makes far more important and sensitive information a matter of public record. Things like home and car ownership are entirely public as it is. While you could argue that this shouldn't be public, there's still valid reasons for those things to be tracked in a central database. Likewise, I can think of valid reasons for why the government would need to know who owns a particular gun. If you are implying that a lack of a functioning Form 4473 index protects the right to bear arms... I'm not sure I agree with that. If the federal government really got a bug up it's butt about banning private firearm ownership, they wouldn't need a Form 4473 index. They would just need to ban the manufacture and import of new firearms and/or ammunition, and let the now-grandfathered old weapons trickle out of the market - no need for a gun grab. This is how they banned fully-automatic weapons, after all. You can technically still buy them, but the cost of a grandfathered automatic weapon is so astronomical that you would never dream of actually firing it.

woodruffw 5y ago

Neither illegal nor a real "registry" in any useful sense, since they're not allowed to digitize or automatically index the paper records, which are frequently mangled or water damaged beyond discernibility[1]. Edit: the National Tracing Center is currently so burdened with paper copies that their floor is literally collapsing[2]. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-guns-get-traced https://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-gu... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/us/politics/atf-nra-guns.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/02/us/politics/atf-nra-guns....

shadowgovt 5y ago
IIUC, digitize yes, index no. Incoming records are photographed and stored into a non-indexed image repository (otherwise, using the data would be completely impractical because of the literally-collapsing-floor problem you mentioned).