Tyndmyr wrote: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.
Only if they determine that the rejection was an illegal attempt to buy a gun, rather than an honest mistake or similar (incorrect name or other information).
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.
So doing their job is harassment? I would say that keeping track of missing guns is a fairly legitimate law enforcement requirement. As is tracking back illegally used guns in order to determine where they came from, and if that source is providing them illegally.
Note additionally that the ATF is not the FBI. The FBI runs the records, not the ATF.
Background checks are FBI. Gun dealer records are ATF. Congress likes to keep them separate because it's easier to target the ATF's funding that way.
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.
Still illegal for the ATF to keep any sort of electronic records, even on rejected requests.
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.
Again, FBI is one agency, and gets some of that homeland security money. ATF is another, and doesn't. The budgets are very deliberately kept separate.
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.
And the laws are exactly what I said. They are non-specific. If buying and selling of guns is your sole or major means of support, you are a dealer. If you have a collection of thousands, and you sell one or two, you are not. If you have a collection of thousands, and you sell all of them, nope, not a dealer. At least not unless the courts rule that way. And the practical fact is that the courts have been (at best) inconsistent, and plenty of people have not been convicted despite fairly significant non-licensed sales. Just because the ATF emphasizes the few cases they've won in their advice to the public doesn't mean they typically do.
Yes, not every illegal seller gets caught. Thus the aforementioned need for enforcement.
Here's a radio controlled boat with a popgun on it. Go prevent smuggling through the Gulf of Mexico.