It could have been transferred in private sales or maybe stolen. That gun could have traded hands many more times after the original sale. Of course, for local law enforcement, that doesn't necessarily solve things. 'It makes them very happy.' Hester calls that 'winning the trace lottery.' About 70 percent of the time, ATF says it can successfully trace a gun back to a buyer. But imagine the delight on the cop's face when we can put that gun in that bad guy's hand in 15 minutes,' Hester says. Melissa Block/NPR If they're lucky, the trace can be completed really fast. Newtown, we got called in on that one.' ATF Special Agent Charles Houser runs the National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. Were having coffee one morning and they got killed. 'The very high-profile traces like Gabby Giffords, I worked on that case,' he says. His cubicle is lined with newspaper headlines about the cases he's proudly handled. 'I take it personally that these traces come across my desk, and I'm doing what I can to help solve a crime,' Hester says. Scott Hester leads an ATF team that handles urgent gun traces for things like gun trafficking, homicide and violent crime. It's a three-page form called a that the buyer and dealer have to fill out before a sale.
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.
TWO LETTER CODE GLOCK SERIAL NUMBER LOOKUP 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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