Because stuff like this.
I like Criminal Minds and my wife is a total fan which translates into never missing a show come hell or high water no matter what I want. But even so, as adults we have long figured out that DNA results do not take 30 minutes and a piss break to come back and what TV writers know about actual police work is laughable at best and infuriatingly dumb most days. When was the last time you heard from any Law Enforcement source from the few states that have gun registration that a case was solved because they used records to trace the gun and found the shooter?
Guns are already traceable to first buyer. The way it was explained to me was that ATF has access to the gun manufacturers records which tells them what gun went where and to what FFL. The ATF then gets in touch with the FFL and requests that the records are looked to get the info of the person who bought the gun. That’s it.
The great untold secret is that tracing the gun owner that way does not solve a case. First, you have to recover a weapon which is not the usual happening (except in Criminal Minds where Computer Whiz Garcia tracks via hacked NSA satellite the isotopes of the burnt powder to the secret compartment in truck doing 55 mph in I-95 south of Boston) and if you recover it, is usually with the guy who shot it attached to it or nearby, with possibly DNA and fingerprints.
I have not read the bill yet, but I am going to assume it is pretty much the same as similar bills in the past: an attempt to introduce Federal Gun Registration.
But go ahead and preach me how these kids are suddenly smarter and wiser than anybody in the world when it comes to “gun violence.”
Update: Over at Twitter, @GunOwner2 reminded me that tracing the gun that killed Customs and Border Patrol Brian Terry was done very fast. It took what? two or three hours to discover that the people responsible for that gun to land in the hands of Drug Cartels were the ATF and the DOJ in Operation Fast and Furious? And seeing that nobody was punished for that colossal fuck up, what would be the point of a law for citizens?
These people do not yet realize that TV/Movies are not accurate sources of information.
There is no DNA or fingerprint database that can search through millions of records and get 100% accurate results in seconds. And, if there was, it would certainly not have a user interface that wastes valuable computer clock cycles providing a visual display of each and every comparison. But, hey! I saw it on TV, so it must be real.
It is the same source of data where gun control advocates claim that no one needs more than one bullet for self defense. Where do they get that claim from? TV, where the detective never needs more than one shot to disable the suspect. (Curiously, that very same detective leads a SWAT team in full body armor into a suspects lair, while wearing street clothes.)
It is the same place where they get the idea an AR 15 is a full auto firearm, and is also the most accurate firearm ever produced. Frankly, you do not even have to aim it. Oh, and shotguns can lift a full sized man off his feet and project him through a store window across the street.
You know, I was watching a movie last week on TV, and they had faster than light spaceships, laser swords, directed energy weapons, and self aware robots. I guess that is reality as well.
And don’t forget the part about how they reconstruct the bullet fragments and then lift prints off of it! That’s crucial science right there.
“The way it was explained to me was that ATF has access to the gun manufacturers records”
“Access 2000” is the name of the program used for ATF to gain access to gun manufacturers’ records. ATF can search by serial number and get the name of the FFL that the firearm was shipped to. This program is voluntary and apparently saves manufacturers money by not having to pay an employee to spend time on the phone with ATF and manually looking up records. Dealers must report this information to the ATF so don’t hate on them for participating.
ATF tweeted a while back that they can trace a firearm in under a day if it was an expedited request so it’s hard to see how any benefits of a searchable database would out weigh privacy concerns.
Much obliged, Bill 🙂
Here is twitter link for ATF stating that they can complete trace in less than 24 hours.
https://twitter.com/ATFHQ/status/849298222824792066
Re “what would be the point of a law” — that’s easy. Ayn Rand said it precisely, many decades ago. The purpose of such a law is to screw those the ones in power want screwed.
https://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SIL18701.pdf
That’s the link to the text of the bill. It’s a demoncrap wet dream that I guarantee everyone but the twithead teens knows is is nothing but virtue signalling for the election. (of course, you never know what might happen)
It would require the ATF to scan and digitize all the 4473s and Acquisition & Disposition ‘Bound Books’ from out of business dealers and require all the manufacturers/distributors/dealers to install (with no funding mentioned in the bill, it would have to be at the licensee’s own cost) what looks like an online “remotely accessible” computerized system with a database of all their 4473s and the Bound Book.
Yeah. The BatBoyz would be able to have their computer system ring up every FFL on a continuing basis to download every transaction. In effect a national electronic gun registration scheme. Get a ‘universal background check’ and this and there’s your instant digital registry bada-bing bada-boop.