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Re: Gun Sold Used in a Crime?

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 7:55 am
by evan price
wls wrote:OK.....a gun that was traded 25 years ago was able to be traced back to the original purchaser! If we don’t have gun registration I don’t know what is. I remember seeing a show a few years ago where the ATF (or FBI ?) showed the warehouse where all the 4473’s were stored and they were complaining that to trace a gun they had to manually go through the records and wanted to computerize them. I thought the government was supposed to keep 4473’s after a certain period of time. Sure sounds like registration to me!
The process is-
Gun is used in a crime. ATF contacts the manufacturer. The manufacturer gives them the distributor.
The distributor gives then the retailer.
The retailer goes to their bound book to find who they sold the gun to. If the retailer is no longer in business ATF has to go to their records department for the bound books sent by ffls who have closed. This is a manual search. The records are not computerized or indexed. Depending on the ffl volume and record keeping skill and organization this may take weeks.
At this point the trail stops.
Private party sales are not recorded. The original purchaser may be the ultimate owner. Or they may not. The only way to continue is to contact the next owner....if it is known, they haven't moved, etc and ask about the gun.
It may lead back to somebody else. Or another ffl. So we go through bound books again.
It's a detective game where nobody knows where any of the clues are.

Re: Gun Sold Used in a Crime?

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 3:38 pm
by willbird
Evan laid out how it goes from new mfg to initial retail sale.

But guns that have been around awile may have been been across several sets of bound books.

1. Joe sixpack orders new rifle
2. Dealer buys from distro
3. Distro sends to dealer, into dealers bound book
4. Dealer sells to Joe....4473 out of dealers bound book
5. Joe sells to Frank Farkle
6. Frank Farkle sells to Suzie Smith
7. Suzie sells to FFL dealer, into dealers bound book
8. Dealer sells to Karl Jones, out of dealers bound book
9. Karl sells to Jim Smith
10. Jim Smith sells to Olive Oyl
11. Olive Oly sells to FFL dealer, into dealers FFL bound book
12. Dealer sells to Evan, out of dealers bound book.

Now how would BATFE know about 7-8 and 11-12 ?? Well they might tell their examiners doing compliance inspections to be on the lookout for one particular gun if it is a medium level case of interest. If it was a HIGH LEVEL interest case BATFE could ask ALL FFL dealers if they had any info, say something like a Federal Judge being murdered.

BATFE has been digging for years in a Federal Judge murder case trying to trace down Makarov replacement barrels, not even a registered part.

Re: Gun Sold Used in a Crime?

Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2018 1:54 pm
by AmberDawn
How did this work out?

Re: Gun Sold Used in a Crime?

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 2:57 pm
by mr_kong
Ongoing.