ATF Gun Traces take 2 Weeks?

MaverickNH

NES Member
Joined
Nov 24, 2005
Messages
8,221
Likes
7,804
Location
SoNH
Feedback: 8 / 0 / 0

Despite having access to more than 900 million scanned records, the ATF can’t look up gun owners or shops by name. When a trace comes in, investigators have to scroll through hundreds of pages of screenshots to find the gun information...

“It’s just a very cumbersome process that doesn’t need to be cumbersome,” said Lindsay Nichols, federal policy director with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “We could do a lot to reduce gun violence without a full-scale gun registry.


…It takes 12 to 14 days for the ATF to perform a routine trace on a gun used in a shooting, robbery or other crime. The record wait time is due to a confluence of factors: shootings are up in cities across the country, ATF staff numbers are down, and more police agencies are seeking assistance in tracking the owners of firearms used in crimes.”

Guns used in shootings, robberies or other crimes are seldom left behind to trace and can only trace to the last legal transaction, which very rarely leads to the perpetrator.

”Troppman said that when he joined the center during the mid-1990s, staff would convert paper gun records into microfilm. Nowadays, tracing center employees use high-powered scanners to input the documents onto computers.

But they must walk a fine line when using 21st century technology in order to avoid running afoul of federal restrictions
.“

Yep - it’s a lot easier when LE can search without warrants, collect and process electronic communications freely and drop cameras in your bedroom.
 
It probably takes them only 1/5 of a second for a trace.

Some commercial websites, where you specify a set of criteria/data to process, add a false delay of 5, 10, 20, or ... seconds to make it look like its doing something complex.

There just saying it takes 2 weeks.
 
Last edited:
It probably takes them only 1/5 of a second for a trace.

Some commercial websites, where you specify a set of criteria/data to process, add a false delay of 5, 10, 20, or ... seconds to make it look like its doing something complex.

There just saying it takes 2 weeks.
When I worked at a dealership, I had a vehicle entry kit (slim jim and friends). On weekends, I'd do lockout calls for locals. I charged $20, cash (this was a wile ago [laugh]) Most of the time, I'd be in the car in 15 seconds....but I made it look like it was a tougher job, so that they felt like they were getting their money's worth.
 
This is a feature, not a bug.

There's no such thing as an emergency trace. The trace requires that the gun already be in police possession, else they wouldn't know the details needed to trace it.

Forget what Law & Order taught you: police can't recover a bullet or shell casing and then trace it to the owner in 30 minutes. They can't do that in infinity minutes, either.
 
How does this work in Massachusetts?

With FA10 done by local dealers - should that be the first place they look?

Those records are electronic.

ma-maura-healey-massachusetts.jpg

il_1588xN.3842502145_g49m.jpg

SOMEBODY...

Find that darn animated GIF.
 
That's a lie. They get that info in about 15 minutes on Law & Order. And every gun is registered to someone. And they have ballistics info on most of them. LOL
 
This is a feature, not a bug.

There's no such thing as an emergency trace. The trace requires that the gun already be in police possession, else they wouldn't know the details needed to trace it.

Forget what Law & Order taught you: police can't recover a bullet or shell casing and then trace it to the owner in 30 minutes. They can't do that in infinity minutes, either.
Yup. South Carolina had a program that failed. My old roommate worked in it, he fired guns into a water tank.

They could never trace a single gun back to a crime after years of wasted money.
 
That's a lie. They get that info in about 15 minutes on Law & Order. And every gun is registered to someone. And they have ballistics info on most of them. LOL
And they also zoom in on very pixelated camera footage that looks like an 80s video game, press enter and the image clears.
 
When I worked at a dealership, I had a vehicle entry kit (slim jim and friends). On weekends, I'd do lockout calls for locals. I charged $20, cash (this was a wile ago [laugh]) Most of the time, I'd be in the car in 15 seconds....but I made it look like it was a tougher job, so that they felt like they were getting their money's worth.
When I worked at a small garage in the 80s, we could put in new brake pads in about 30 minutes- from pulling the car in to ready for the customer.
Owner told us to wait a few hours before calling the customer to say his car was ready.
 
Yup. South Carolina had a program that failed. My old roommate worked in it, he fired guns into a water tank.

They could never trace a single gun back to a crime after years of wasted money.
But if he got paid to fire guns all day long, I’d call that a win!!
 
But if he got paid to fire guns all day long, I’d call that a win!!
It is sh*t shooting. Imagine having to hold a gun at a certain angle, a certain distance from a pool and shoot it once, then retrieve the cartridge, do whatever they need to do to store it and do it again, and again, and again ...

In the boredom scale, it is probably one step above assembling gun parts all day.
 
Back
Top Bottom