Federal gun sales databse

[Rex B]

Contrary to Federal law, and to no one's surprise, the ATF is apparently building a database of gun sales.
I have always assumed that those 4473s turned in from FFLs who retire or die were probably scanned.
Now that all the big stores have gone to electronic 4473 forms, I think we are just accelerating that process. Those digital 4473s are each a record in an ever-expanding database.

Are digital 4473s now or soon to be mandatory?
Can a buyer insist on a paper version?
Does anyone know where and how those digital records are stored? Do they remain on-site at the store as the paper versions were, or is that whole dataset sent to ATF as part of the approval process?

For myself, I'm going to be hesitant to buy a gun from any store that does only electronic 4473s.

[Rex B]

"Federal law explicitly prohibits the creation of a federal firearm registry, but the Biden administration is making one anyway. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has collected nearly one billion firearm purchase records. The government has now created a searchable digital database containing 866 million of these transactions, including some 54 million made in 2021 alone."

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/0 ... tent=daily

[carlson1]

I feel really stupid. Those electronic 4473’s have never crossed my mind. You know it goes directly to ATF.

[Paladin]

National Tracing Center in Martinsburg West Virginia:

For the Gun Grabbers this isn't enough:

[jerry_r60]

National Tracing Center in Martinsburg West Virginia:

For the Gun Grabbers this isn't enough:

That was an interesting video. While no easy task to find a purchase, I suspect it's not quite the needle in a haystack that it sounds and looks like. That is born out by the high success rate they have. If they store dealer records by state, dealer, year or combination of that, they can narrow that mound down quickly. I'm making the assumption that the Manufacturer and the wholesaler have computerized systems for doing business like most other companies. That would let a search begin with the Manufacturer and quickly get to a specific dealer by requesting the manufacturer/wholesaler search of those computer records. That would then get them to a State, Dealer and at least a start date. No records before that initial sale to the dealer need to be looked at. That greatly narrows down the set of boxes that has to be searched.

I assume they key at least meta data into a document management system, making searchable which batches of documents are in which box and where that box is stored.

[Ruark]

Everybody's bee-atching about this, but where are the proactive people? Why isn't somebody taking this to court or something? Where's the NRA, or the NRA/ILA, GOA, FPC, etc. ???? Nobody's making a peep...

[Paladin]

The Gun Grabbers want these records retained indefinitely, but the ATF itself shows that long term record retention has little utility:

Options to Reduce or Modify Firearms Regulations

Pending ATF Regulation Regarding FFL Records Retention (20 years): ATF has a
regulation pending at DOJ to increase the requirements for FFLs to retain records
indefinitely. The current standard is 20 years, and records older than 20 years can be
destroyed. The intent of the change from 20 years to indefinite retention is to provide
access to records for firearms traces over longer periods of time. However, many argue
that crime guns are not frequently recovered with times to crimes from purchases over
20 years old. Also, older firearms possessed by criminals frequently transfer hands
several times and a trace will often not lead to the criminal after so much time has
passed. ATF has averaged approximately 1,200 failed traces a year over the past 5 years
due to records destruction, accounting for less than one half of one percent of traces
conducted nationally each year. While such an extension is arguably a viable law
enforcement intelligence tool, much of the firearms industry is opposed to such a
change and a closer review of this proposal could be beneficial.

[Rex B]

I am shocked - Shocked! - that the government is scanning those 4473s!

So currently the resultant PDFs are tabbed through by people who are looking for a serial number. The AI/OCR technology exists to automate that process. All it takes is a politicized FBI or ATF to make that change, and we have that too.

Technically it's not a gun registry, but it would perform the same function. All the data is in place to make it a true registration overnight.
Digital 4473s eliminate the most inaccurate and inefficient element of the process. That's a pretty good argument for supporting your local gun store (or private seller) at least until the digital forms are mandated.

[Paladin]

I assume they key at least meta data into a document management system, making searchable which batches of documents are in which box and where that box is stored.

I imagine they do keep metadata. From the video they appear to convert the paper records into electronic images as quickly as they can. There must be some system of organization for the electronic images.

In the not too distance past Form 4473's were only retained for 7 years by gun dealers... that was typically plenty of time as the "time to crime" for criminal guns is usually under 2 years.

What exactly is going on with the electronic 4473's is one of the million dollar questions. It appears these records are being kept indefinitely.

[mrvmax]

The ATF has been scanning 4473's that are turned over for years, even decades. They have so many there's a backlog waiting to be scanned. Keeping paper 4473's requires much storage space and many FFLS have gone electronic - including me.
Your info gets to the ATF in four ways (there are probably more than that but these come to mind). First, if you are in a border state and by multiple handguns or multiple semi auto long guns greater than 22 caliber in five business days. When you do that all your info and the gun info goes to the ATF and the chief law enforcement of her.
Second, when an FFL goes out of business all the forms go to the ATF.
Third, during audits the ATF can request copies of transactions and get 4473 info.
Fourth, if there are trace requests (I e. Gun used in a crime) the 4473 is sent to them.
Normal 4473's do not go to the ATF, they have no access to FFL computer systems. FYI 4473's are required to be kept for 20 years, after which they can be destroyed.

[powerboatr]

WOW WOW
i never thought about digital forms, i have not seen one and my favorite dealer uses paper,
i learn something here everyday
thanks

[Rex B]

Cabelas has been using digital forms for years, and Academy uses them now.
Cabelas process for buying a gun is now very long and requires multiple sign-offs along the way. It took me approx 45 minutes to buy a .22 pistol, and that was after waiting 30 minutes for a spot on the counter. This was at a time when they weren't very busy at all.

[tk1700]

I work at a gun store in NM. We use digital 4473s, but the form stays in the store on our server. The customer fills out the 4473 info on a computer using a form fill built into the point of sale software. That form stays in the store. The employee making the sale reviews the customer info to verify it matches the ID, is signed and the questions are answered correctly, just like we would on the paper form.

The employee then logs into NICS and manually enters the required info, biographical info, ID number, type of fire arm being purchased. It's the same info that's provided when a paper form is used and the shop calls it in. During a call in the person on the other end of the phone is entering the info into the computer. NICS generates a transaction number and a response of proceed, delayed or denied. The only difference in how the customers info is handled between a paper 4473 and electronic 4473 is who enters the info into NICS.

This system is simple to use, we don't have to cipher peoples writing and we don't have to call the info in. There are a few instances when we have to call it in and I absolutely hate it, but we still have the customer complete the form electronically. There is no connection between our point of sale system that stores the customer inputs and NICS.

I guess you can make the argument that electronic 4473s stored on a shops server can be hacked.

[Rex B]

tk1700, thanks for sharing that.

Questions:

What software system are you using for 4473s?
Is that (or is there) an industry standard, or are there other software packages for this purpose?
How does the system store the 4473s - a database, PDf, CSV etc. ?
Does it store information other than the 4473 - Photo ID scans for example?

Any other FFLs want to share your experience?

[Paladin]

John Lott weighs in:

Democrats Pushing Gun Registry as Precursor to Gun Ban

Two-thirds of Republicans believe the policy will lead to gun confiscation, and even 40 percent of Democrats believe the same. Confiscating legally owned firearms, it seems, is not merely a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Confiscation is the only thing registration is good for:

In a 2001 lawsuit, the Pennsylvania state police could not identify any crimes solved by their registration system from 1901 to 2001; however they did claim that it had “assisted” in a total of four cases, for which they could provide no details.

In a 2013 deposition for District of Columbia v. Heller II, the plaintiffs recorded that the Washington, D.C. police chief could not “recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime, except for possession offenses.”

During testimony before the Hawaii State Senate in 2000, Honolulu’s police chief stated that he couldn’t find any crimes that had been solved due to registration and licensing. The chief also said that his officers devoted about 50,000 hours to registering and licensing guns each year. This is time that could have been spent on traditional, time-tested law enforcement activities.

New York and Maryland spent tens of millions of dollars putting together a computer database on all new guns sold in the past 15 years, even recording the ballistic fingerprint of each gun. But even these states, which strongly favor gun control, eventually abolished their systems because they never solved a single crime.