GQ Inside the Bureau of Way Too Many Guns (crosspost from Good Reads)

[wcast]

There's no telling how many guns we have in America—and when one gets used in a crime, no way for the cops to connect it to its owner. The only place the police can turn for help is a Kafkaesque agency in West Virginia, where, thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated. On purpose. Thing is, the geniuses who work there are quietly inventing ways to do the impossible.

So here's a news flash, from Charlie: “We ain't got a registration system. Ain't nobody registering no damn guns.”

There is no national database of guns. We have no centralized record of who owns all the firearms we so vigorously debate, no hard data regarding how many people own them, how many of them are bought or sold, or how many even exist.

Anytime a cop in any jurisdiction in America wants to connect a gun to its owner, the request for help ends up here, at the National Tracing Center, in a low, flat, boring building that belies its past as an IRS facility, just off state highway 9 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eastern panhandle of the state, a town of some 17,000 people, a Walmart, a JCPenney, and various dollar stores sucking the life out of a quaint redbrick downtown. On any given day, agents here are running about 1,500 traces; they do about 370,000 a year.


https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns

[yallerdawg]

1. The thankless, "bureaucratic" job.

“Newtown was traumatic,” Charlie tells me. “People were bawling and tracing and bawling. Everybody's going, ‘Oh, my God, somebody's done what? It's a kindergarten class? Who, what, how many?’ There's confusion. We start to get a little bit of stuff. Everybody's jumping around, waiting for anything they can get. We gotta get this, you know, right? We gotta do something, we gotta do something, we gotta do something. C'mon, c'mon, let us, give us a chance, right? Put us in. You know? Give us, give us—give us a way to contribute. Let us do our part. Because that's, you know, that's what I get out of this whole thing.

[wcast]

2. It is amazing that, despite the legal hurdles thrown at them, they have become more efficient.

That is a direct result of feeling their job matters.

[deathrind]

3. Please tell me that...

I have been fooled here by some finely done satire...


"I want to ask about the microfilm—microfilm?—but it's hard to get a word in. He's already gone three rounds on the whiteboard, scribbling, erasing, illustrating some of the finer points of gun tracing, of which there are many, in large part due to the limitations imposed upon this place. For example, no computer.

The National Tracing Center is not allowed to have centralized computer data.

“That's the big no-no,” says Charlie.
That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America's gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It's kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name."

Unreal...

[wcast]

6. I agree.

I'm not against gun ownership but there should be meaningful registration for gun ownership similar to the DMV database.

[pipoman]

4. There is no federal registration and will not be without a constitutional amendment

So much credit is given to the "gun lobby" it is completely ridiculous.

thanks to the gun lobby, computers are illegal and detective work is absurdly antiquated

Nonsense...computers are not illegal, and is the legendary "gun lobby" responsible for the antiquated systems at the State Department, IRS, and military?...

Then there's this, lol...

" there's a murder. Blood everywhere, a dead guy on the floor. The cops come in with their yellow tape, chalk line, the little booties, cameras, swabs, the fingerprint dust. One of them finds a gun on the floor. The gun! He lifts it with his pinkie, examines it, takes note of the serial number. Back at the station, they run a trace on the gun. A name pops up. It's the wife! Or: It's the business partner! It's somebody's gun, and this is so exciting because now they know who did it.

Except—no. You are watching too much TV. It doesn't work like that."

Lol...no, the one watching too much teevee is the moron who thinks bodies are often found with the gun laying next to them...

No, the registration...in places it has been instituted, doesn't result in any....none...additional cases cleared. Canada revoked its registration requirements after spending a billion dollars and not having a single case to justify the cost...

[wcast]

5. The point of the article is that they are not allowed, under law, to enter information into a

computer that is searchable.

Per the article: That's been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America's gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It's kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name.

They also only have the records from shops who went out of business. To make matters worse, Their funding has not increased since 2005.

TLDR- Federal law makes gun registration almost meaningless.

[pipoman]

7. The gun lobby only has one single tool

"We will challenge that law/restriction/rule on constitutional grounds"....that's it.

Registration at the federal level is asked and answered by SCOTUS as unconstitutional....that includes scemes.

No, this is a tempest in a teapot...registration is a waste of time and money.

[deathrind]

9. You forgot.

"We will primary you"...with unlimited resources.

That's a pretty big tool.

[pipoman]

10. Unlimited resources? LOL

Where do these "unlimited resources" come from?

[beevul]

11. "Unlimited resources" is where the gun lobby gets outspent 5 to 1 and still wins.

Or something.

[deathrind]

8. Don't waste your time.

Trying to rationalize. The gun lobby always has an excuse as to why any type of firearm legislation/control (registration/UBG checks/mag caps) won't work or do any good so nothing should be done.