Well, they are.
I call NICS with the 4473 in hand and answer the questions pertaining to name, place of birth, ethnicity, race, state of residence, type of firearm, and S.S. if provided. They in turn issue a transaction number that I fill in on line 21B as well as a disposition (proceed, delayed or denied.).
So, the FBI has a listing of these transaction numbers and they could theoretically be married to the 4473.
Thank you! Although you didn't mean to you just made my point. They collect info on the buyer from you BUT NOTHING SPECIFIC ABOUT THE GUN. They don't even ask for the serial number - just whether it is a long gun or a handgun. Unless and until they get their hands on that piece of paper they don't even have the buyer's address - just a name, a state of residence, and a transaction number.
If they got their hands on one of my guns and wanted to link it directly to me they can't just punch it into some computer somewhere and have it tell them my name. They have to get a court order, then go to the manufacturer and get the info about what FFL it was shipped to. Then they have to go to that FFL and look at the paper record to determine who they sold it to. If I bought it new from that FFL then they can look for me at the address I put on the form when I bought the gun. Maybe I still live there, maybe I don't. Maybe I have the gun, maybe I don't. Maybe I lost it in a boating accident, or sold it to someone I didn't know.
The ability for law enforcement to be able to follow this paper trail step by step and SOMETIMES be able to connect a criminal to a gun is the reason the old FFL records aren't destroyed. While a lot of these investigations hit a dead end somewhere along the way, some do actually allow them to connect a particular criminal to a particular gun. That is why they archive them. But it is a multi-step time-intensive process, not just a quick computer search.
The big picture here is that the ATF or even the FBI cannot look up a list of guns any of us own in some database - either by serial number OR by your name. The FBI can look up how many times an individual has had a background check to purchase a firearm from an FFL. But they can't tell you what any of those guns were without going to the FFLs and looking at the paper forms. Even the records of FFLs that have been surrendered aren't in a database - they also have to be searched by hand on microfiche viewers. By the way, ever use one of those? I have, searching newspaper and magazine articles for research in college. I can tell you they are not exactly what anybody would call a "registry" or a database.
This whole thread is about the OP - and some who have agreed with him - saying that the 4473 forms ARE (as in right now presently) a gun registration system. I'm saying they ARE NOT. Could they be used to create a registration database. YOU BET. Would it be a simple and easy thing for the ATF or FBI any other other agency to create one from them? NO IT WOULD NOT. Could they do it in secret - in direct contravention of the existing laws against it? NO WAY. They don't have the resources to do it, and if they tried, the number of people required to do it would mean they couldn't possibly keep it secret and not have it leak out. Not in the information age we live in and with that many people involved. Could they really do it without the cooperation of people voluntarily registering their guns? Heck no! There are HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of guns that have changed hands multiple times without the sale being recorded since they were purchased new, not to mention the hundreds of millions that existed prior to the GCA of 1968 that have never been handled by an FFL.
Now, if we want to talk about what COULD happen, or what could theoretically be done, then that would be an entirely different thread and conversation. It is definitely possible that they might somehow someday get laws passed to require us all to register every gun. And it is possible that if enough people knuckled under and voluntarily registered all their guns, then they'd have a good start at a gun registration database. But they'd have to start by requiring every gun owner to submit a 4473 (or similar form) for every gun they own. Then they'd need to follow that up with gathering up all of the existing 4473s from all of the FFL holders and hiring a small army of people to review and input all the data from all those forms into the database.
So far I haven't seen any evidence that this has happened. But some incremental steps have already been taken by some states. THESE laws are what we need to be focusing on and resisting. Allowing these incremental encroachments to stand, and allowing them to becoming more widespread are what we need to be focusing our energies on - in order to avoid universal registration becoming FACT instead of hype and paranoid hyperbole.
Last edited: