CBS-ATF-4473-Computerization

[Aguila Blanca]

Originally Posted by dogtown tom

I really don't get all the panic about searchable 4473's.......that isn't "gun registration". Its records of transactions between dealer and buyer. The buyer could sell or gift that gun two days later and ATF would never know. No federal law allows ATF to maintain a registration database of anything but NFA firearms. Even if every Form 4473 was sent to ATF to scan, catalog and create a database........it still wouldn't be gun registration.

The problem is the "death by a thousand cuts" problem. The more data the feds collect, the closer it comes to being a de facto registry. This is already an on-going problem in Pennsylvania, for example. The Pennsylvania State Police are barred by law from maintaining a firearms "registry." However, PA law requires all transfers made by FFLs to be reported to the State Police, who record all that data in a searchable "database" that is available to all local police and sheriffs' departments. More than a few people in PA have had their lawfully-owned sidearms confiscated at routine traffic stops because either they had bought the gun before it was required to have been reported, or they had inherited it, or they had brought it with them when they moved into PA.

So a cop or a deputy confiscates your lawfully-owned firearm, and to get it back you have to be able to PROVE to them that you are the owner.

This has gone to court more than once, and the PA courts routinely rule that because the database is not complete, it's not a "registry." Yet the police use it as a registry. IMHO, we don't want to encourage anything that takes us farther down that proverbial slippery slope.

[mehavey]

A rose by any other name . . . .

[JohnKSa]

To say the government doesn’t, can’t establish a central registry does not consider that they would like to and will if they can.

BATF tried to and got their hand slapped. Congress cut their funding. I can't find a cite right now, but this was a few years back.

[DaleA]

It's a multi-part presentation so I'm going to hold my comments to the end. You can see the first part, and its transcription, here:

https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/ne...mes-minnesota/