On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 12:40:43 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:

On Sun, 03 Feb 2013 07:59:30 -0800, Gunner
wrote:

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 15:25:30 -0500, "Ed Huntress"
wrote:



"Stormin Mormon" wrote in message ...

Listening to the radio, today. Aparently,
"instant checks" or universal background
checks is another form of registration.
Since, it can be reasoned, that anyone
who applies to be checked must be a gun
owner of some form.

Christopher A. Young
Learn more about Jesus
www.lds.org

============================================= ==

No, anyone applying for a background check could be a first-time gun buyer.

Records for successful purchasers must be destroyed in 24 hours. That is,
federal records. In some states, you have a de facto registration because
you have to fill out a purchase form (handguns in NJ, for example) for which
the *state* retains a copy.

Dealers must...must store a copy of the 4473. If/when they go out of
business..those forms are boxed up and shipped to the ATF, at which
point they are entered into their computer system. Often times, quite
badly entered..ie replete with errors that in later will bite someone
in the ass.

Unless the business is sold or goes out of business, they exist only
in the "bound book" at the FFL holder's place of business. The ATF has
no way to go looking for a record on a particular serial number except
by starting with the manufacturer, going through the records of any
wholesaler, and then learning who the retailer was. After that, it's a
field trip to the retailer to go through their bound book.

That's a system designed (by the NRA) to defeat the tracing of guns by
overburdening the system with expense and legwork. The NRA succeeded
in their effort. It requires a large, and very expensive, effort to
find the first purchaser of just one gun.

And then, more often that not, if the original purchaser is found, it
is learned that the gun was "stolen," with no legal consequences to
him. Or he gave it to his brother as a gift, who *swore* that he was a
legal purchaser.

If you wanted to design a system that choked off the legal ways to
trace a gun, and that made it all but impossible to prosecute straw
purchasers, you couldn't do much better.


This is Federally done. At any time an ATF investigator can come in
and "review" the 4473s and take whatever "notes" he/she desires..in
some cases..using a portable scanner and scanning just about anything
they want...and occasionally....scanning EVERY 4473.

That is legal as well.

And if he's trying to track down a gun used in a crime, how does
"reviewing" one of the 65,000 or so gun-dealing FFL holders help? How
does the ATF know which one they're looking for? Or do they just go to
all 65,000 at once?

Somebody wasn't using their head when they let the NRA get away with
that one.

But Ed, is there a real effort made to track down a gun used in a
crime? When I lived in Maine I was friendly with a State Police
Officer and from his descriptions of a couple of crimes it appeared
that the police were far more intent on capturing the guy that did the
robbery, or in one case shot a cop, than finding a specific gun.

In the case of the Cop shooting the perpetrator resisted arrest and
was shot and killed so the question of the gun never came up but in a
Bangor bank robbery the robbers were captured and tried and sentenced
to the state prison (and the question of gun ownership didn't come
up).

I have this feeling that a national gun record database may well be an
exercise intended to pacify the electorate by demonstrating that "See,
we are doing something".

--
Cheers,

John B.