DanD wrote:Except that background checks can only be kept for 24 hours, at which point the FBI is required to destroy them. Which means the purchaser can wait 1 day, re-submit, and the FBI has no evidence.
Again, they are permitted to keep rejections.
They are subject to restrictions to prevent them from building a database of legitimate gun owners, but they are not prohibited from prospecting crimes.
The ATF is also not allowed to require inventories from gun dealers, and the dealers are not required to report "lost" guns. And the ATF is not allowed to inspect a given dealer more than once a year. Which makes tracking illegal sales rather difficult. And even if they do turn up a lot of guns from a single dealer at crime scenes, they aren't allowed to use that trace data in proceedings to strip the dealer's license.
This is because they kept abusing their powers to harass gun stores with punitively expensive compliance costs.
Note additionally that the ATF is not the FBI. The FBI runs the records, not the ATF.
And even if they could, they aren't allowed to keep purchase records in an electronic database, so cross-referencing is essentially impossible.
A rejected request is not a purchase.
So, it's not so much that current laws aren't being enforced, it's that an agency which has a budget not much larger than it was a decade ago, is restricted from enforcing them in any effective manner.
As far as whether current laws, alone, would be sufficient: estimates are that 85% of guns used in crimes change hands in a private sale at least once before they are found at a crime scene. And many of those "private" sales are from unlicensed dealers who are selling from their "collection" of several hundred weapons, all price tagged and ready for sale. The definition of a FFL dealer is extremely narrow. So no. Until we have universal background checks, current laws are not sufficient.
Please,
Homeland Security, etc have gotten buckets of money dumped on them for improving security. It's just been spent on stupid crap. Law enforcement has plenty of money to play army, so the logic that they can't afford anything is dubious.
Also, your statement regarding FFLs is entirely incorrect, and such activity is blatantly illegal. If you resell two firearms for profit as a de facto dealer, and lack an FFL, enjoy prison. You can find a helpful description at
https://www.atf.gov/file/100871/download. Go on, and read what the current laws actually are before deciding they are insufficient.
Yes, not every illegal seller gets caught. Thus the aforementioned need for enforcement.