wrote:
On Sun, 16 Nov 2014 06:46:59 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:
On 11/16/2014 12:02 AM, wrote:
On Sat, 15 Nov 2014 22:03:46 -0500, Roger wrote:
The way I see it is if a gun is used in a crime and still has a serial
number on it the first step would be for the police to contact the
manufacturer. From there they would know the dealer who sold who will
give them the buyers name. When they contact the buyer they will be
looking for the gun and I would prefer to know who I sold it to if I
didn't have it. If it was sold privately, I only have a bill of sale
and a copy of their drivers license (not required but that's what I
do). By transferring through a dealer we aren't forcing registration
but we a taking ourselves completely out of the loop.
Cops seldom even care where a gun came from. Maybe some day they might
but I am not sure what purpose it would actually serve.
If the gun is not fairly new, it will usually have "been around" and
there will be gaps in the ownership chain.
4473s are not required to be sent to DC and the dealer can destroy
them after 20 years. If the dealer goes out of business or simply
dies, his 4473s and his "bound book" may just languish in a dusty box
until his family throws them out..
The current system was purposely designed NOT to be a registry.
Let's take, for example, one of the guns Harry bought in Virginia.
Harry has the gun, there is a Maryland dealer with the 4473 in his
files but if Harry doesn't say who he is and know how to get in touch
with him, there is no way to find him. If you do, there will be a
direct link to the dealer in Virginia and the person who sold it to
him but if they can't locate that person, the trail goes cold again.
If they do find him and he can't locate the dealer he got it from you
are still dead in the water. Every private owner is a break in the
chain and there is no national database linking them.
That all assumes every transaction went through a FFL to begin with
and that those dealers and their records still exist.
I doubt more than 10% of the dealers I bought guns from over the years
are still in business or that the FFL holders are even alive.
Most were used when I got them (from a dealer) and the chance of
getting back to the manufacturer is nil.
I have some that were sold in a number of private transactions before
I bought them. They are total dead ends.
Thank you for accurately describing the flaws and antiquity that exist
in our gun control procedures and laws.
The requirement for the paperwork records
to be maintained by licensed dealers was established in 1934.
Maybe it's time to think about modernizing them?
BATF does have an online system but that does not address the 300
million guns that were traded in the old paper based system, maybe a
billion or more 4473s rotting in file cabinets around the country.
I just opened Notebook and created a file with my name, address, phone
number, email address, a fictitious handgun model, 9 digit serial number
and the date.
Total file size was about 100 bytes.
Assume 300 million of these files existed in a data base. Not much of a
server required to maintain all those files.
I agree that the size of each file may not be a big deal but nobody
uses flat text these days. A blank 4473 in PDF is 74KB and that is the
format of choice these days.. They would want all the signatures and
stamps on the file.
The way the government does things would require a couple hundred new
people to get this system going and once you have them, you can't get
rid of them.
This will not be a cheap program to administer and to what end?
If the transfer was legal, law enforcement has no real reason to look
at the seller and if it was illegal, the record won't exist anyway.
We had a case locally a couple years ago regarding a motorcycle. Person
bought it, seller filed the change of ownership papers, and new owner rides
in to a barb wire fence with passenger. Seller was going to lose their
house, etc, as they could not prove they sold the vehicle. Luckily, 3
years later as old state files were going to be disposed of, the paperwork
was found. How many people will get sued because they were an owner of
record of a firearm used in a crime? Paperwork does not get filed
properly. Computer crash. Etc. we had campground reservations in Denali.
The computer showed I had made a reservation, but no reservation could be
found. Infallible computers?