ATF National Trace Center
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) tracer Debbie Marshall reaching for a microfilm roll of firearm transaction documents, from firearms dealers no longer in business, as she researches a firearm used in a crime, at the National Trace Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)

The [ATF’s national tracing] enter receives roughly 1,800 gun trace requests a day from local law enforcement agencies across the country. Their job is critical: take the identifying information they’re given and piece together a weapon’s path, from manufacturer to retailer to buyer.

But because of an arcane tracing system and serial understaffing and underfunding, it takes an average of eight days to fulfill a routine trace request. Under the quickest scenarios, it can take about 48 hours, but only if the center surges resources, such as after a mass shooting, said Neil Troppman, program manager at the tracing center.

A look around the facilities explains why. Workers sometimes pull from stacked boxes of records that line the hallways, spreading the papers on the floor before taking a closer look. Other staff members spend their days converting any digital records the facility might have into non-searchable PDFs.

Congressional Republicans want it that way. They view the agency having far extended its defining purpose — turned by Democrats into a de facto arm for gun control.

“The ATF has a history of trying to target law-abiding gun owners and gun stores — rather than criminals — in pursuit of an anti-Second Amendment agenda. That’s not the purpose of the bureau, and that kind of agenda won’t keep our communities safe,” said a spokesperson for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a statement to POLITICO.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), whose legislative push to modernize ATF lacks a GOP cosponsor, called the current limitations “deliberate roadblocks to the ATF being able to do its job efficiently.”

“But let me put it this way: Nothing in this bill is a further limitation on peoples’ abilities to purchase guns,” Van Hollen said in an interview.

The debate of the role and upkeep of the tracing center provides a vivid illustration of how the obstacles gun violence advocates face aren’t simply legislative but bureaucratic.

While much of the national conversation has focused on President Joe Biden’s renewed calls for an assault weapons ban after a mass shooting in Nashville last week, other pleas from the White House have also gone unnoticed. In particular, Democrats have been rebuffed in their legislative efforts to modernize a tracing center handcuffed by a 1986 law that prohibits the government from keeping “any system of registration” of firearms, firearms owners or sales. Their calls to increase funding for the ATF, the agency the White House sees as playing a vital role in combating the onslaught of gun violence, have similarly been rejected.

— Myah Ward in Want to See the Hurdles Biden Really Faces in Making Progress on Guns? Come to W.VA.

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60 COMMENTS

    • Hmmmmmm, there is nothing in the Constitution that allows our public servants to have a gun registry………….. or an ATF.
      =
      This is the command of the common law.
      =

  2. Trust the BATFE, they only violate the law and murder our citizens when they have good “Reasons”.

    • It is just too bad that Florida has red flag laws. How in the hell is that constitutional is anyone’s guess.

  4. “… turned by Democrats into a de facto arm for gun control.”

    Let me fix that for you…

    …turned by Democrats into an unconstitutional weaponized, un-elected private interest compromised and controlled, arm for gun control.

    there, FIFY

  5. Why in the world would any self-described “Liberty person”, want to spend money to modernize the security state??? I don’t like the BATFE at all. As far as I am concerned, they can continue to use the equipment from the “stone age”.

    And yes I know it takes forever to get the permission slip to purchase a suppressor.
    Having rented a suppressor which you don’t need permission to do. I want one even more now that I have actually I used one. They are incredible!!! They make shooting an even more enjoyable activity.

    But I think this could become the “government cocaine”. To get people to support modernizing a government agency. That will in the end destroy them.

    • The obvious solution to that is to eliminate the NFA registry and sell suppressors like brakes and flash hiders.

      • The planets do occasionally lineup.
        big(smile)

        BTW
        It was a 22 caliber suppressor that I rented. And using a aguila calibrio ammunition, it was “Hollywood” quiet.
        Next time I’ll be renting the 5.56 suppressor.

  7. ” ‘But let me put it this way: Nothing in this bill is a further limitation on peoples’ abilities to purchase guns,’ Van Hollen said in an interview.”

    That’s a lie. This bill and every bill the democrats have introduced had the goal to do just that by various methods by either chilling, restricting unconstitutionally, or down right using language that could be further exploited, and this bill would help establish a gun registry which is unconstitutional and illegal because the language could be exploited to simply call it something else.

    • “Nothing in this bill is a further limitation on peoples’ abilities to purchase guns,’ Van Hollen said in an interview.”
      The left keep saying the same thing as if ‘limiting’ the ability to purchase guns is the only issue POTG has with their agenda.

      • This is literally true. The bill does not limit your ability to buy. Instead, it just makes it easier for the government to track your purchases and seize when they want.

    • Even if that were true, which I doubt, the issue would remain: “You may not be limiting my ability to buy a gun(s), but you are significantly enhancing your ability to efficiently take it (them) away again.”

      THERE’S the rub.

  8. The ATF like the DOJ, FBI, IRS, and Homeland Security are all corrupt and should be defunded until they clean up their acts. They have all been weaponized by the Democrats against American Citizens and need major reform.

    • all corrupt and should be defunded until they clean up their acts.

      all corrupt and should be defunded.

      Yu;re welcome. Any time.

  11. And I completely trust our benevolent and omniscient government (particularly in the form of the BATFE) to ONLY use such a database to ‘trace’ a gun used in a crime. Pull the other one; it has bells on it.

  12. I don’t expect any government agency to be eliminated overnight. Just like I don’t expect my second amendment civil rights, to be all returned to me overnight. Incrementalism has been extremely successful at getting our second amendment rights back.

    And incrementalism in reducing federal spending, will be the most successful at reducing the size of these Individual government Agencies. And reducing the size of government overall.

    • I agree. Zero budget, have an auction, and send them all home should happen but never will. They’d all end up being reassigned to other agencies (from policies/responsibilities/authority to staff to paper clips). The bureaucracy has become a self-perpetuating behemoth that will never die, and will not give up an inch of ground without a tooth-and-nail fight.

  13. RE: “A look around the facilities explains why. Workers sometimes pull from stacked boxes of records that line the hallways, spreading the papers on the floor before taking a closer look. Other staff members spend their days converting any digital records the facility might have into non-searchable PDFs.”

    Just sweep all the ATF Gun Control up and burn it.

    If a very lucky perp survived to obtain one of my Sar9s and used it in a crime all LE needs is a projectile and/or spent cartridge to know what firearm the perp used and to begin locating what is not a whole bunch of Sar9 owners. 3 days max before they would be knocking.
    And with forensics around the days of throwing the gun in the river are not what they used to be.

    • Just sweep all the ATF Gun Control up and burn it.

      Yup. dump it all in along with the coal and use the head to generate electricity.

      As to your fantasy with the Sar9.. they may be quickly able to figure out who originally purchased that gun new, but if it had been sold to owner number two, three, twenty seven, legally, that trail runs mighty deep and cold and fast. Even if they DID learn the name of who had lawfully purchased it with NICS check, that DOES NOT put them on a hot or even warm trail to the PRESENT possessor, lawful or otherwise. might tag YOU, but you’ve already told them its yours, along with the S/N. But that does not LOCATE it in present tense.

      Chicago had a fun time a coule years back. Seems a crime was committed with a none mm handgun in their territory. They recovered spent casings and a round or two found at the scene. But no gun and no names. Months later, different crime dir=ffreerent part of town.. same gun based on ballistic print data. Still no address to go collect it and its user. For two years and well over a hundred cries, THAT GUN was used repeatedly. It would be used in a string f crimes in one area, then “go dark” for months. Then it would turn up in a different part of town. Lather rinse repeat. One fine day thei happened across a nine mm handgun when cleaning up a crme scene. seems the user had not been sufficiently skillful to have survived the occasion. SAME GUN. Finally they had it. It had been used in somewhere near 150 crimes ID’d as the same one, but never identified as to make/model OR provenance. Back at the lab they ran a trace.. results came back almost instantly. It popped up as moving from the manufacturer to the distributor, then from the distributor to retailer, but then the trail went cold.. because it had been stolen in a burglary of the retail gun store.
      Your Sar9 could easily walk down that same path for ten years before being snagged some strange place.

  14. All PDF files are searchable. You simply have to click a box in the program that the federal government uses to store PDF files and every file becomes searchable instantly.

  15. National Gun registry = confiscation, confiscation = bloody civil war, but what do I know.

  16. “In particular, Democrats have been rebuffed in their legislative efforts to modernize a tracing center handcuffed by a 1986 law that prohibits the government from keeping “any system of registration” of firearms, firearms owners or sales.”

    Wait a minute. Based on the axiom that it’s always Opposite Day in leftist land, this statement must be a sleight of hand conjuring trick. They are admitting to already compiling a registry. Which is no surprise. Pick a card, any card…

  17. Just let people defend themselves and the number of murders would plummet. No need to do as many traces. Problem solved.

  19. take the identifying information they’re given and piece together a weapon’s path, from manufacturer to retailer to buyer.

    Is that not the EXACT definition of a “gun registry”…

    • No, because there are multiple steps in the process that ultimately requires them to go visit the selling FFL to obtain those records. There is no one single source of information. Plus, once they find the original buyer, then they have to find out who that buyer gave/sold/lent it to, and then go find that person, and so on. If a gun was stolen, tracing is just another dead end. Of course, the ATF does NOT publish the number of times a trace is not useful in identifying a perp.

      • Let me guess, you are one of those who believes that once the feds have completed their background check that they just delete ALL the information transmitted to them (like make and serial number of the firearm and your name, address, date of birth and social security number) yeah and Braindead is the greatest POTUS in history… How do they know who the selling FFL is? Oh yeah, they already HAVE that information… And I guarantee you the ATF national TRACING center is not the only federal agency holding that information…

  20. Let’s back up to this statement right at the start of the article that makes an assumption about how important tracing actually is:

    “Their job is critical: take the identifying information they’re given and piece together a weapon’s path, from manufacturer to retailer to buyer.”

    Why, exactly, is this critical? Has a trace ever made the difference in actually solving a crime involving someone having or using the gun, as opposed to nabbing another criminal for a completely separate crime (e.g. straw purchase)? If so, how often does the information provided by a trace, make the difference between conviction and acquittal?

    Has being able to get the information in a day, versus a week or so, ever made a difference in solving a crime?

  21. Wait a minute. How is it critical to trace a gun from manufacturer to distributor to buyer? How often with violent crime do the stars line up such that:

    1) You have the gun used in the crime;
    2) You DON’T have a suspect for that crime; AND
    3) The gun was lawfully purchased by the perpetrator of that crime?

    I’m going to guess that’s somewhere between “rare” and “vanishingly rare”.

  22. Funny, I coulda sworn that the ATF just got a big funding increase for some reason or another. Maybe the ATF would rather fund other activities than the record keeping/tracing branch.

  23. Are you serious?
    If you filled out a 4473 form to buy your gunm it’s on a national registry. Bring the truth to light.

  24. After reading both the posting, and the linked article, it is curious that nothing was reported regarding the success of the “traces” actually resulting in solving a crime. Not talking about the “traces” being a confirming element, but the sole element.

  25. It’ll still end up there, financing a registry, but it’ll be in canvas bags because they have to do it on the sly. Then some of the coming IRS agents will be reassigned to AFT.

  26. Before the NFA act Chicago Gangsters shot it out in the streets with machine guns in broad daylight. The NFA Act and later Reagan’s Machine gun ban, put an end to that and a national registry of all guns would do the same in regards to criminals and psychopaths being able to get all the firepower they want by buying unvetted second hand guns. Even a moron can understand this but the Far Right are not only morons they are paranoid psychopaths themselves which makes it impossible to reason with them.

    • So now they use Glocks and AKs with ALREADY ILLEGAL full auto conversion triggers… Gangs are making a fortune in LA and Chicago doing these conversions and selling them to other gangs, They start with a stolen gun and NO fucking registry is going to make any difference once the gun has been stripped of all its serial numbers.. The NFA is just a piece of paper, the Machine Gun ban is just a piece of paper and a National Registry would be the same… No paper has ever stopped anyone from doing anything unless they have respect for and recognize the authority of the governing body that issued it… Know who “criminals” respect? NO ONE… Laws only work for the law abiding… Class dismissed, now go sit in the corner… Apparently you MUST be a MORON to believe that a national gun registry would put an end to criminals getting their hands on guns, those same gangs are using 80% lowers to build guns and they have rooms FULL of them, take them away and they’ll 3D print, not all gangsters a stupid…

    • I have news for you. Gangsters and psychopaths are still shooting people. Quite often in broad daylight too. The NFA never changed that.

  27. The article lacks a single word in it about the ATF being in violation of purging records after a period of time in clear violation of the law.

    I’m going to say no to electronic record keeping but every single bill that wants this should be poison pilled with jail time for ATF leadership if records are not purged.

    Any such bill should also have teeth added to remove qualified immunity for any prosecutor found guilty of violating the FOPA of 86 such as NJ DAs tend to do as well as strict, heavy handed penalties.

  28. Tracing a gun with a serial number is child’s play. You go to the manufacturer and the mfg tells you who the distributor is. From the distributor you get the gun store and the purchaser. It it take more than 20 mins, the person doing the tracing has no clue

  29. What percentage of these searches result in either identifying and convicting a perpetrator, returning a stolen gun to its rightful owner, or leads to a straw purchaser or corrupt FFL? I’m guessing very close to 0. If it were significant, they’d be crowing about their accomplishments and projecting how many more they’d get with a modernized system. Instead, it’s just a Federal jobs program with no results that needs to be eliminated. Bureaucracies need to spend their budget allocation in order to justify a higher allocation next time, so they don’t like to eliminate useless programs.

  30. PRO’S AND CON’S TO REPLYS , NO THEY NOT COMING FOR YA GUNS , LAW-ABIDING WOULD NOT ALLOW IT . WE THE PEOPLE WOULD STOP IT .
    DO UNDERSTAND WHAT POLICE HAVE TO DEAL WITH ALSO .
    DOUBLE SIDED SWORD . TWO SIDES TO THA COIN .
    O’WHATEVER .
    CRIMINALS RUIN IT FOR ALL OF US LAW-ABIDING . ALWAYS HAVE , ALWAYS WILL .

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