It's up to the federally licensed gun dealer to keep the record of each gun purchase. It's that dealer who should be able to say who bought that firearm. Then, ATF contacts the wholesaler and goes down the record chain until it finds the retail gun dealer. ATF then starts running that information back through the distribution chain, contacting the gun manufacturer - say, Glock or Smith & Wesson - and the manufacturer checks its records and identifies the wholesaler it sold the firearm to. Here's how it works: Local law enforcement sends ATF the particulars on the gun they've seized: the manufacturer, model, caliber, serial number.
GLOCK SERIAL NUMBER LOOKUP MODEL MANUAL
It involves lots of phone calls - and often, manual labor. Many people assume that ATF has a massive database of gun owners at its fingertips and can instantly access that information. Last year, ATF processed more than 344,000 crime gun trace requests.
On a recent visit, they had 700 calls to make. Here, in a warren of cubicles, ATF contractors are busy on the phones pursuing trace after trace. the one place in the country that can investigate where the gun came from. The trace begins after police seize a gun at a crime scene and then reach out to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. In fact, federal law already bans the creation of such a registry.Īnd the reality of how gun sales records are accessed turns out to be surprisingly low-tech. Cliff Owen/AP Opponents of expanding background checks for gun sales often raise the fear that it would allow the government to create a national gun registry - a database of gun transactions. Document prep technician Carol Sine (left) and tracer Debra Barrett process firearm transaction documents at the National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va.
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