The Biden administration has disclosed that it possesses firearm purchase records by Americans that adds up to almost one billion, contrary to what members of Congress were aware of, on the heels of an investigation last year showing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has records on more than 54 million transactions.
ATF acknowledged in a letter to Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX), which was obtained by The Washington Free Beacon, that it currently has records of more than 920 million gun purchase records. Cloud launched a probe after the outlet reported on the stockpiling of records, which he called a “federal firearm registry” that is “explicitly banned by law*.”
The agency has been transferring hard copies of the records to a digital database used to find guns related to criminal activity, even though ATF denies that its records are intended to track owners. More than 850 million of the records can be accessed digitally, the agency reported. The documents can then be digitally searched with optical character recognition technology.
Now that’s going to make you feel all warm and cuddly when filling out the hated 4473 form, isn’t it?
Thank gawd for private transactions (which, by the way, these gun-grabbing pricks are trying to make illegal, too).
*The Firearm Owners Protection Act (FOPA) prohibits ATF from crafting a registry on sales or owners and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that registries are banned for gun ineligible Americans. FOPA states:
No such rule or regulation prescribed [by the Attorney General] after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition be established.
Not that these fuckers care about breaking the law, apparently…
We all knew. If they have a billion records, the problem is far bigger than the Biden junta. Probably goes back to the dawn of the 4473 in 68, It probably wasn’t explicitly illegal until 86 but it was always there. So every President since Reagan was overseeing a violation of the law. If indeed they ever knew, the Deep State being what it is. And I bet they have CCW records, ammo purchases, accessory purchases, etc. just in case you managed to get a gun outside of their line of sight.
Of course they do. The banks, credit card companies, accounting software systems your gun makers use, etc. have some sort of record of any transaction that didn’t involve cash on a street corner…. consistently.
Yeah, I’ve been saying it for years – why do you guys need to know what caliber, make and model weapon I’m purchasing (unless I’m buying my old buddies operational WWI French 75mm).
My background check, right? Me.
Oh, oh, oh, right, you want to see if this gun that just came from the factory has been used in a previous crime.
Right, of course, right. Whatever was I thinking.
It’s a pity all of those checked weapons are tragically sitting on the bottom of Lake Texoma, or maybe it was Wright Patman. Might have been Lake Nasworthy. In any event after I righted the canoe I marked the spot in the bottom of the canoe with an X, just in case they wanted to know where it was in whatever lake it was that I overturned the canoe and lost all the weapons.
Now, where did I rent that canoe from? Uh, shoot. I’m old, bad memory.
As Hillary would say, I don’t recall at this time.
I did see a while back they tried to claim they dug through the hard copy records of a pawn shop in Georgia to track the original purchaser of a weapon that was used to gun down a cop in New York 15 years after the guy pawned the gun.
Sure you did. Easy Peasy.
….. and when they find Mr. Benjman Dover who pawned that gun, they are going to throw him in the federal Pen never to see the light of Day again.
I think it’s time to repeat your Blog essay on why everyone in South Africa wanted a firearm the government didn’t know about. Disfavored people won’t be getting guns if the regime can help it.
Just remember, that gun better be the same caliber as a gun they do know about…. because your ammo, accessory, etc. purchases are also in the accounting records of the place you bought them from.
Can you say “Counter Sale”?
Kim,
Two words for all the science / physics geeks out there ..
Schoedinger’s gun ..
Random thought on this topic. The lefties and rinos always say something to the effect of “90 percent of ditto heads want gun control”.
If the American people bought 1 billion firearms from dealers – this doesn’t even count private transfers and inheritance – that doesn’t sound to me like 90 percent of the American people want any form of control.
The deep state of bureaucracy has been long out of control. Ike warned of the military industrial complex but the far worse problem is government bureaucracy since it gets its tentacles into every aspect of our lives.
JQ
Ike waned about the technological, governmental, academic “complex” in that same speech – but our “intelligentsia” likes to just gloss over that.
They have no right to do any of this crap, but the camel’s nose has been under that tent for so long these cretins believe they can up the anti. Ross’s Unintended Consequences speaks to this, too bad the house cleaning can’t be done in the same manner (unless they DD a pile of Marines and SEALS, won’t go well for the reprobates).
Not surprising. The sheriff in my county was served about a month ago with a court order to preserve documents pertaining to a whistleblower who indicated that the sheriff’s department was keeping a registration database in direct defiance of state law. While this is a very red county, our sheriff lost his nerve a few years ago when one of his deputies was killed in the line of duty and has since become a leftist stooge for gun control (spoke repeatedly in favor of our red flag laws which took about 6 days to be abused).
Of course, a court order to preserve documents that could land an elected official in jail is a bit like warning your local crack house that the cops will be raiding tomorrow.
Hmpfhh, Is anyone surprised? ANYONE?
The fed does what it wants to do and the people be damned.
You don’t like it? Whatta you gonna do about it? – – – Huh!- – – – Punk!
The current attitude at the alphabet agencies is “We’re the Feds, what the fuck are YOU going to do about it?”.
I’ll wager that that sentiment was very large among the Brit bureaucracy in the 1770’s – not that it did them any good.
Since those 4473’s remain in the possession of FFL’s until they close their shops, sell their business, or die; I would be on the right side betting many “old-timers” in the game make shredding their files their last job on this battered rock.
I hear that ATF agents are visiting shops and photocopying their 4473’s on a regular basis. They are not waiting for the shop to close to get those records into a database. This, of course, is much easier since Clinton shut down the majority of FFL’s to close the “kitchen table” loophole.
He required them to have a storefront and regular hours, even if they were a custom gunsmith, and had no need for the retail visitor. Plus, dealing with lots of deliberately conflicting zoning codes. IIRC, a long term local shop was forced out of business because the ATF required bars over all glass, but zoning forbid it at his location.
Are you trying to tell us that you believed these agencies would really “obey the law”? I can’t believe you could be that naive. Tell me it ain’t so…
The law is for you, not them. Much as I despise FJB, it’s been going on a lot longer (though he was in the Senate then). Credit card records, cashed checks, even cash receipts in some cases (remember carbon copies?) … all on a database someplace from before the general public even heard of “database”. Gotta be at least back to the 80s, if not the 70s (I believe the 70s based on a little incident with the po-po and the information given to my attorney at the time a decade or so back. That and some … organizations … I was familiar with back then). I should know better and I still “don’t know”. Scary if the truth were out … or ignored as “it’s for our safety”
By the way, ID55 was recently closed again north of Smith’s Ferry (Jan 24). Another rock slide that’s since been cleared – again. I think that’s the 3rd time in the past year or so. I suspect you’re familiar with the Cougar Mtn Lodge.
I am retired military and I can buy 2 Glock pistols a year on their Blue Label program for about 15% below retail price. I shoot them and 2 years latter usually end up selling them privately for more than I spent on them after the required holding time. In GA for a private sale the premise of selling to a legal gun owner is all that is required by law. No records are required of the sell. Most of the pistols I have sold have gone to CCW holders. I have done my due diligence.