No need to worry, Holder knows where all the guns are.

Even W didn't bother putting a name forward for the job in his last two years.

Just an indication that the beltway does not see this as important, until they can get some political mileage out of it - in this case, on the backs of dead children.

There is a lack of will to enforce existing regulation, and existing regulation is insufficient (not real way to punish an FFL holder for 'losing/misplacing' major parts of their inventory...) so what will new unenforced regulation do?

I know there are shady bastards (dealers) out there, like one in a large urban area in the south sound named after the center of a circular target, so I don't deal with them.

But I ain't one to gossip, so I won't name them.

I do not believe 'bad' FFL dealers are the only problem, but lack of enforcement has allowed some bad players to make other legitimate and responsible dealers look like a tools.

Lack of a dedicated director for such a large and important agency is the clearest indication that this was never a priority.

Did your mom have any kids that lived?

Well, to be honest, the stipulations added to ensure things like; arms dealers are only audited once every 17 years, there's no requirement to keep sales/inventory logs, background checks must be destroyed within 24 hours we're pushed by my party. By some knucklehead who sold his soul to the NRA over his constituency. It's just gross.

You cant even deny someone drunk or high a gun purchase anymore? That's "illegal" to do. The new wording is to ask arms dealers NOT sell to drunk people, due to morality and NOT legality.

I just watched the Daily Show this morning that highlighted all of this garbage. It is wierd that the ATF has been absent from all of the gun control debates going on. What is more weird is that the NRA is guaranteed a loud voice, or even final say on what legislation is passed while the ATF is absent from the conversation. In a just country, shouldn't the bureau dealing with the criminals be dictating the legislature, not the gun lobby? Well its a moot point considering the NRA completely and covertly inoculated the ATF.

The Daily Show is what caused this half-baked post. I'm REALLY interested to hear kid, smokin, Montana's view on this. It's plain fucked up.

Oh, they also did a bit on how at first the GOP block Sandy relief, then, the Libs did.

The Daily Show is what caused this half-baked post. I'm REALLY interested to hear kid, smokin, Montana's view on this. It's plain fucked up.

The Daily Show is what caused this half-baked post. I'm REALLY interested to hear kid, smokin, Montana's view on this. It's plain fucked up.

It was my understanding that in 2006 the auditing procedures placed upon the ATF make it virtually impossible to audit more than once every 17 years. You are correct, Smoking, they CAN audit, but procedures and firewalls we're put in place making it unlikely.

I think you'd be surprised how much the NRA has written their own rules. I'm a 2nd amendment guy, but hate the black n white world the NRA chooses to live in.

I'll look up the cockblockery in question and lay it out. I'm surious too now (not "curious" in the way you are though).

Given that it's been two days since you posted this I must conclude that you were not able to find any law, BATFE policy, or other such document to back up your claims.

It would appear as though The Daily Show wasn't entirely honest in their zeal to stir up anti-gun sentiment in the minds of our young people. Wow, whodathunkit? That Jon Stuart Leibowitz seemed like such a straight shooter, too.

The National Tracing Center is the only place in the nation authorized to trace gun sales. Here, researchers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives make phone calls and pore over handwritten records from across the country to track down gun owners. In contrast with such state-of-the-art, 21st-century crime-fighting techniques as DNA matching and digital fingerprint analysis, gun tracing is an antiquated, laborious process done mostly by hand. The government is prohibited from putting gun ownership records into an easily accessible format, such as a searchable computer database.

When firearms dealers close, they are required to box up their records and send them to the Martinsburg tracing center. Charles Houser, who oversees the center, and his staff are inundated by the thousands of boxes of records that come in on the trucks each month. They are stacked high along the walls and between cubicles. Last year, the backlog of boxes waiting to be sorted and digitally copied reached 12,000.

"I was absolutely appalled and depressed at what they are going through out there," Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science, told ATF officials at a hearing this year. "Literally you see pallets of these records come in, and they're just absolutely overwhelmed."

In 1972, when the ATF separated from the Internal Revenue Service and became its own bureau within the Treasury Department, it had about 2,500 agents. At the time, the FBI had 8,700, the DEA 1,500 and the U.S. Marshals 1,900.

Thirty-eight years later, the FBI is up to 13,000, the DEA has more than tripled to 5,000, and there are 3,300 federal marshals.

The ATF, now a part of the Justice Department, remains at 2,500.

Nationwide, dealers lose track of an enormous number of guns. Since 2005, 3,847 inspections have documented 113,642 guns that cannot be found. (The Bushmaster rifle used in the D.C. sniper killings in 2002 had gone missing from a gun store in Tacoma, Wash.)

The process is complicated because dealers by law do not have to take inventory. In a 2003 provision authored by Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), Congress prohibited the ATF from requiring dealers to do inventories. As a result, ATF inspectors sometimes have to spend days or weeks poring through a dealer's paperwork and physically matching it to the guns on hand.

"An annual inventory is part of every business," said Zammillo, who retired this year after four decades with the ATF. "Congress said we forbid you to require a business to take an inventory.

April 2009, the job of acting director was given to Kenneth Melson, a former Virginia prosecutor and director of the Justice Department's Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys. But Melson was demoted to deputy director under the Vacancies Reform Act, which limits how long acting chiefs can run federal agencies. He still runs the agency, but the top job sits vacant.

Willingham's Sports in western Alabama found a way to stay open even after the ATF revoked its license. Along a stretch of a highway in the small, riverfront city of Demopolis, the store lost track of more than 180 guns and failed more than 700 times to correctly log firearm sales over a dozen years, records show. The ATF took the rare step in early 2002 of moving to revoke the store's license.
But licensee Jimmie R. Willingham appealed through the agency's internal process. He told an ATF hearing officer that he didn't mean to break the law.

"It's all paperwork," Willingham said. "And it's been neglected. And it's our fault."

The case wound through ATF channels for two years before the revocation was upheld. Willingham then turned to the courts. Almost a year and a half passed after that. It was mid-2005 before a federal judge and a court of appeals had both ruled for the ATF.

"Willingham carelessly disregarded its recordkeeping obligations under the Gun Control Act for more than a decade," the district judge said.

The ATF repeatedly authorized Willingham to sell guns while the revocation played out. Finally, in August 2006, more than a year after the courts ruled in favor of the ATF, Willingham's license extensions lapsed.

The ATF visited to make sure Willingham understood that his license was no longer valid. He told them he was transferring his inventory to his father, who had worked with him at the shop and had secured his own ATF dealer's license for the location. ATF inspectors reported that the father told them he would operate his gun business "inside his son's sporting-goods store."