The Annoyed Man wrote:VMI77 wrote:sjfcontrol wrote:VMI77 wrote:
Sorry, but I think you're wrong. They may not know for a certainty who has what, but, for example, they pretty much know for a certainty someone with a CHL is going to have at least one gun...and likely more. The Feds have also been monitoring the internet for years now, so everything anyone has purchased over the internet can be compiled for a pretty good picture of what you own. Even if they don't know specifically what you own, they may know you've got an MP 15-22 (because you bought a mag for it and have bought .22 ammo), a Springfield XD in .45 (cause you bought a Crimson Trace laser sight for it and have purchased .45 ammo), and .243 (bought a scope and ammo and hunting license), a .410 and and 12 ga (bought ammo, bought a hunting license), and a 1911 (because you bought a pack of new springs from Brownells). Places like Walmart, and the credit card companies, will probably turn over their records too, so they'll also have access to transactions made in person if you didn't pay cash. They may also require all dealers to turn in their 4473s.
Doing that kind of research on an individual may be possible, even likely if you commit a crime (such as shooting up a movie theater or school), but I believe it unlikely to be performed wide-scale on a few hundred million citizens. There simply aren't enough investigators to do something like that in a timely manner.
Maybe, and you'd be right if there was no centralized data collection, but I think you underestimate their ingenuity and the current software, and the database creation that has been occuring. For one thing, they don't have to do it on a few hundred million citizens. They can flag certain transactions, set a simple score index, then burrow in. There aren't 300 million people buying guns and gun accessories. The scoring could be a simple flag count, to which they could apply a threshold: name-flag. I'm just making up numbers here, but say, a certain name-flag comes up once (where a flag is a purchase of any gun, accessory, or ammo) --it gets tallied and ignored, but if it keeps getting flagged, at some point it breaks a threshold....say 1,000 name-flags....then that person gets a deep search using the collation software and has his purchase history constructed. Maybe they've determined that it takes at least 1,000 name flags, or 5,000, for enough data to construct a reasonably accurate estimate of guns owned. They may know enough to know that certain purchases don't matter....that say, they only need to track ammo and magazine purchases, or ammo and sighting devices, etc, which further reduces the effort --depending on how well matches are correlated to construction of ownership.
And they can also use multi-flag tests. For example,
they start with the database of CHL holders, then look for purchase flags, sorting out only those that cross the threshold. Or they could start with CHL holders with (or without) prior military service --depending on the political point they want to make. They could narrow it down further to CHL holders, prior military Special Operations experience, enlisted, NRA member --and just count flags on that group. Or they could start with that group and pick out certain states that haven't been "nice" to the administration. Texas, say, passes legislation that Texas LEO's won't enforce the Federal Gun law....so it becomes: CHL holders, prior mil spec ops, enlisted (or officer instead), NRA member, Texas resident. There are numerous way to cut down the effort....I do similar kinds of sorting in my own work to eliminate unmanageable results.
I'm only responding to the two items I highlighted in red:
First item: I don't think they'll require gun dealers to turn in their 4473s. I think they'll just send squads of 2 or 3 BATFE agents each out to gun stores in the area they want to suppress, and those agents will simply walk in, demand to see the 4473s, box 'em up, and walk out with them. It's illegal as all get out, but given the BATFE's recent history, who here seriously thinks that they'll let the law stop them from doing exactly that? Remember, we're talking about ERIC HOLDER's gun-walking BATFE. That way there is no possibility of dealing with a refusal of a gunstore owner to comply. What's the dealer going to do to to stop it? Fire on Federal Agents? Not if he wants to stay in business and keep all of his inventory from being confiscated. The most a gunstore owner will be able to do is to immediately start phoning his regular clients and warning them that BATFE just confiscated all their 4473s so that the customers can start taking action to protect themselves. (Taken directly from "
Enemies, Foreign and Domestic" by Matthew Bracken)
Second item: How do they lawfully obtain the
entire CHL database from Texas? First, doesn't there have to be exigent circumstances for DPS to open an
individual CHL record? Doesn't a CHL holder have to be named by the requesting agency to obtain that CHL holder's information? Is the TEXAS DPS likely to cooperate in that kind of a massive federal attempt at gun confiscation?
MAYBE, but my gut says that DPS would likely resist—at the governor's direction—any such attempt. Now, that doesn't mean that the feds wouldn't try to hack their way in and
steal the database, but again, their efforts are likely to be done in violation of the law..........just like they do nearly everything else. Really, the only information that the FBI or BATF might be able to access without forcing state compliance are NICS requests and FBI background checks requested by states on behalf of CHL applicants. The first group, NICS, is not supposed to store the records, but I don't think there is anyone naive enough to believe that the federal government has actually honored that law for many years now. But the second group is not that useful to them because the fact that the FBI has done a background check, EVEN if the applicant passed the background check, is not a guarantee that a CHL was actually issued. The citizen in question may have been disqualified from issuance for some other reason not relevant to the FBI. For that reason, I think that data-mining the commercial records, while cumbersome at the first level tunnels, would be much more "productive" as one drills downward to find those individuals who likely have a banned firearm.
To the first item...I'd guess they'll do both. Immediately they may hit some gun stores in a targeted area, but in the longer term, both as cover (to deny they were selectively targeting gun dealers) and to get more data, they may tell dealers to turn in their forms. I don't think many dealers would fail to comply because it wouldn't be that hard to pick a few out and do an audit of a handful of dealers: do number of guns sold equal the number of guns listed on the forms? I don't think most gun dealers, especially corporations like Academy, are going to fight the Feds. However, as evidence that the first reaction may be to roust gun dealers....well, in a way, it has already happened. My CHL instructor had a gun shop --a very small gun shop too. The BATF showed up, went through his records and then went around to the homes of at least two of his customers. One was local LEO and they went by his home while he was on duty. I don't remember now how his wife handled it. Another guy was in my class, renewing his CHL. Two agents showed up on his doorstep and asked him to show them the AK he just bought so they could confirm it matched the serial number on the 4473. If I remember correctly, the agents either made copies of the forms or wrote down serial numbers for the guns they planned to check. Anyway, the classmate said he refused to let them in without a warrant. Again, if I remember correctly, I believed he produced the gun for them to see, but wouldn't let them close enough to see, or hand it over for them to check, the serial number, and they didn't press it.
As to item 2, without cooperation of the State, they may not be able to get it legally, but there are probably several backdoor ways for them to get it. If they could steal it, that would be their first choice. Otherwise, my first guess would be that they'd either use the carrot or the stick on someone who had the ability to deliver the database. If they had leverage on someone they'd use the stick, if they didn't, they'd simply find some Obamabot in the organization and offer a reward for "doing the right thing." In fact, let me correct the statement about stealing it: if they can steal it, they already have. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that they've been hacking into other data bases and stealing data from anyplace they can. And I'm guessing it would be relatively easy for the Feds to steal just about any state database. Also, there may have already been some backdoor agreement cut with the Feds that we've never heard about. And then there's the background checks...which they no doubt keep in a database. It's true there isn't a one to one correspondence between the check and and CHL (unless there is some feedback mechanism we're unaware of), but for the purposes of data mining it really doesn't matter....it's close enough. For example, if they're selecting for prior military, Texas CHL, NRA member, with multiple purchase flags, what difference does it make if, say, 5% of those they issued background checks on don't really have their CHLs? It's just a starting point to narrow the field, and I'd guess that there would be other selection criteria with higher priority --like the number of weapons estimated to be in possession, Party affiliation, and public visibility.
Someone suggested that gun bans will be similar to the TARP - wildly unpopular and still passed by the Legislature.