Martinsburg, WV: BATFE gun-tracing details are low tech.

[surprise_i'm_armed]

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763 ... get-traced

The above link contains a 7 minute, 50 second long radio piece on the BATFE's gun tracing site in
Martinsburg, West Virginia.

You may choose to simply listen to the story, or just read the transcription below.

The transcription is pretty close to the audio version. I found it most informative to read the transcription
while listening to the audio.

The highest tech part of this largely manual operation was that 4473's are scanned 16 hours a day, but they
are not actually searchable PC-style with software.

On the day of the radio reporters' visit, the center finished 1500 gun traces. Since they had 5,000 more stacked
up, that was a 3.33 day backlog.

SIA

[Jumping Frog]

So reading between the lines, it appears the ATF has 30% of all Form 4473's in its possession form all the dealers and wholesalers that have gone out of business. I don't like that.

I do like the fact that the records are not easily searchable.

[gthaustex]

A perfect model of government efficiency. That said, it would be nice if they were even less efficient when it comes to things like 4473 forms....

[surprise_i'm_armed]

A perfect model of government efficiency. That said, it would be nice if they were even less efficient when it comes to things like 4473 forms....

Perhaps you should ask your US representative to file a bill to require all 4473's to be translated into Esperanto,
and that all serial numbers should have the "letter" portions changed to Cyrillic characters, and the
"number" portions need to be in base 7? :-)

SIA