Admitting that the 4473 is registration, or media incompetence?

[PhiloebeddoUSA]

To the OP's question about type used, just read a story which all but says it was a semi auto. She went around a boardroom style table shooting coworkers at point blank range until it jammed on her. She shot six people all on one side of the table.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100216/ap_on_re_us/us_ala_university_shooting

 

[Tommygunn]

I guess to me the whole thing is a puzzlement.
Some nutcake goes on a shooting spree .... AFTER the smoke clears, the officials go into gear to find out how the gun was obtained. And this will stop crime ....how?
The crime was already commited. Whether the 4473s are registration or not is irrelevant.
I guess the bureaucratic types have to do it to get their ducks in a row for the inevitable legal proceedings that necessarily flow from nutcake shootings as well as others .... but it really doesn't help anyone to know how Lady Loopy got the gun.


I think crime rates might actually have been lower in the 19th century, before this 4473 cr@p started ..... though I'm not trying to infer correlation is causation.
Just expressing frustration .... I guess.

 

[MachIVshooter]

All the serial number is going to produce is the 4473 for the sale from the dealers.

Only the original dealer, at that. Some dealers may record the information of a person who sold or traded in a gun, but many toss the consignment form once the gun has been sold. Even if they keep it, there's no guarantee that the info on that form is reliable. It could easily be an alias with a bogus address. And on a trade-in or outright sale, there is likely no link at all. Once a gun has been resold, except in states that do have a registry, there is no positive way of tracking it. Best they can hope for is that every person who bought and sold the gun remembers who the next guy was.

 

[TCB in TN]

I would love to see some proof of this.
250k dealers over 20 years will generate about 10million of the standard 25 page bound books (I fill up about 2 bound books a year and I am a small dealer). Add to that there is no standardization required: as long as the relevant information is present the format is up to the dealer. So the "books" (and they can be looseleaf books or spiral notebooks) cannot be simply scanned in and the information searchable. In addition, after even 1 or 2 years most of that information is obsolete. People move. People die. People get married. People get divorced. People sell or trade their guns. All the 4473 can show is that the person had possession of the gun at some point in time.
So the benefit of making the information seachable and "available to law enforcement" (paging Tiahrt) is minimal, certainly not worth the man hours required.

I don't know if the info has been digitized or not, but it wouldn't be that hard to search on whether they have someone key the info in or scan it. IF the information is in a database it is VERY easy to get it out. Especially if they log information such as DOB, DL# etc and link that DB to the current DMV databases then it would be a VERY easy search to come up with a current address for anyone whether they moved once or 100 times. I used to work doing production and inventory control, production analysis using MS Access, and could give you a single pc of information liked like that out of a 50million row DB in 10sec. There are more powerful DB tools out there that would give the ATF or whoever many more options too!

 

[waterhouse]

In news story after news story, the media keeps saying that her gun "wasn't registered," but by now, even the idiots in the media know that Alabama has no gun registration.

I don't know if I agree with this. As mentioned by dogtown, I have several customers who ask me about registering their guns. These are guys who own 10-15 guns (IOW, not noobies), and their dad gives them another, and they want to know how to register it in their name. As long as gun owners think that guns are registered or licensed, I don't have much faith in the media getting it right.

We also know they have the serial number of the firearm she used. ERGO, their lack of ability to tie this particular firearm to her (via paperwork) is the result of a lack of only one thing: a 4473.

There could be a 4473 with that serial number on it, but (as pointed out) since it is legal to sell guns privately in most states, having a 4473 linking that serial number to Mr. Jones doesn't mean anything when Mr. Jones no longer owns it. 4473s are mostly worthless for any "registry" scheme as long as private sales are legal.

I have spoken to FFLs who get trace requests from ATF. Request is putting is nicely because it's more of a demand. I watched an FFL friend spend hours of their OWN TIME digging out 4473s so as to comply with a trace request.

I'm not sure what happened in that particular case. I've recently had my first 2 traces in 7 years. Both times they called, basically said "Gun Make/Model with this serial number was shipped from Dealer X on January 7th. You should have received it around the 10th or so."

I then look in my book, where I log guns in as they come in, and see the gun arrived on the 11th and was transferred on the 13th to Mr. Smith.

I open my file cabinet and find the matching 4473, which is stored in alphabetical order.

The whole phone call, from me picking up to the tracing center saying thank you, took about 3 minutes.

The second trace was very similar.

If it took hours to find the right 4473, there was either something pretty special about that request or the dealer's records were not very organized.

Some dealers may record the information of a person who sold or traded in a gun, but many toss the consignment form once the gun has been sold.

Dealers are required to note where the gun came from in the Acquisition section of the Acquisition/Disposition book (commonly called the "bound book"), but other than that your points are sound. The odds of tracking a gun beyond the first sale are probably pretty small.

 

[jaysouth]

How about this scenario?

Johnny buys a gun from a dealer, does the paperwork, gets approved, goes his way.

Next year Johnny does a trade with a "private individual" at a gunshow. It changes hands again. Last owner trades to an FFL for a new trinket. New FFL sells it using proper channels.
New FFL has 4473 on file, and sale properly logged.

How does ATFE track this second 4473? They don't broadcast trace requests. Each trace is specifically targeted.

Ain't possible. That gun has disappeared off the face of the earth as far as the ATFE is concerned.

 

[Warhawk83]

Quote:
Since they're not calling it an "assault pistol," I suspect she used a revolver.

FoxNews said a 9mm handgun was found in the bathroom of the building.

This whacko should have been locked up in 86,I didn't know the "accidental" shooting involved 3 shots.

Also,a few years back, when she worked at Harvard she was questioned about a PIPE BOMB that was sent to her boss a few days after they had a major knock down drag out. The bomb didn't go off, and she was cleared, but no one was ever charged...

 

[22-rimfire]

I suspect she knowingly killed her brother. She needs to stay on her meds.

 

[smince]

My experience (in Alabama):

I purchased a USED Star 9mm from a licensed dealer, around 1996. I kept it for a while and decided it wasn't what I wanted, so I sold it to an individual I worked with.

About 2 years ago, an ABI agent came to my door and asked me if I had ever owned that particular gun. I did remember it, as it was the only Star product I had ever had. Also, I rarely sell to an individual, usually trading back in to a dealer. Although not required, I generally keep a record of which guns I've owned and who I sold them to.

I gave him the name of the individual I had sold it to, he left, and I never heard anything else.

So, if the 4473 that is filled out for a used gun is so hard to track, how did the ABI get my name from the dealer I bought it from?

 

[MachIVshooter]

How does ATFE track this second 4473? They don't broadcast trace requests. Each trace is specifically targeted.

They can't, unless every person from the first buyer to the guy who sold/traded it to the FFL remembers who they dealt with.

 

[jaysouth]

Smince,

New or used, you bought it from a licensed dealer and executed a 4473. The gun was tracked to that dealer and thence to you.

This would only hold up if the person selling to the dealer was the original purchaser. In that event, it was a fairly straight line from the importer to you.

 

[wishin]

There's also the possibility that the gun was a "black market" purchase somewhere down the line. If it found it's way to her by this route, there is a good possibility that the gun was stolen and reported as such. Even at that, what good does it do them to know who it was stolen from? Although I'm sure the person from whom it was stolen will be happy to get it back someday after the trial and appeals are exhausted.

In answer to the OP, I would have been surprised to read a newspaper account that didn't use the words "not permitted or unregistered" right from the start. I guess if there were as many firearms accidents and deaths as the ant-gun folks contend, the media would know the state's gun laws by rote.

 

[Bubba613]

New or used, you bought it from a licensed dealer and executed a 4473. The gun was tracked to that dealer and thence to you.

Not necessarily.
First, ABI is not ATF. I am not sure whether AL is a NICS state or not. Second, the information could have come about from an investigation of someone else. Third, if the gun came to the dealer used there would be no way for ATF to track it to the dealer, unless Smince also bought another handgun from the same dealer within a 5 day period. In that case there would be a report of multiple sale and the information would be stored with ATF in a database.
Dealers acquire guns basically these ways: new from the distributor (less often manufacturer), or used from trade in, buying from individuals, or buying used PD trades from distributors etc. The only trace that can be done is from a new gun, beginning with the manufacturer/importer. Otherwise there is no way to establish a chain of ownership.

 

[smince]

unless Smince also bought another handgun from the same dealer within a 5 day period

I didn't

 

[GunsAmerica Fan]

Bubba I don't have the proof, but we deal with ATF all the time and I have been told this by many field agents, not just one. When it comes to digitizing paperwork the government has systems worked out long ago on how to do it efficiently.