The Low-Tech Way Guns Get Traced (spoiler: it's by hand)

[Robb]

That's right, hand-search.

That means that if it's a gun maker or seller who's gone out of business, the workers here have to painstakingly leaf through these documents one page at a time looking for a match to the gun they're trying to trace.

"The idea that we have a computer database and you just type in a serial number and it pops out some purchaser's name is a myth," Houser says.

They don't have that searchable, central database because the National Rifle Association and the gun lobby have successfully blocked that through Congress. They argue that a database of gun transactions would be a dangerous step toward a national gun registry.

So tracers comb through page after page of records as they stand amid boxes stacked head-high. ATF gets more than 1 million of these out-of-business records every month. And when they open those boxes of paperwork, who knows what they might find....

Read More: http://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-guns-get-traced

[DanTex]

1. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

And to think that it's this way on purpose, because an efficient computerized system triggers paranoid fantasies in the minds of gun nuts.

Meanwhile, criminals are not being caught, and guns are falling into the wrong hands by the millions.

[DirkGently]

2. A national database is the next most common-sense

gun safety reform past uniform background checks. A lot of the "Fast & Furious" nonsense could have been avoided entirely if 1) there were reasonable limits on multiple simultaneous firearm purchases and 2) purchases could be tracked by computer.

The NRA's go-to fallacy for opposing registration is that it's only to "tax 'em or take 'em." It's part of the gubment conspiracy gospel, and the reason, as is becoming painfully clear, is that illegal gun sales are part of what the NRA's gun manufacturing sponsors want to protect.