MaverickNH
NES Member
'It's just insanity': ATF now needs 2 weeks to perform a routine gun trace
Boxes of paper records fill nearly every corridor of the ATF’s National Tracing Center, where agents are struggling to keep up with surging requests from local police.
www.nbcnews.com
“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.