Shane FOUNTAIN, you are correct about that change. More on the subject:
Despite appearances, this is not a simple change, and it has the potential for profound impact. No longer will the identifying information for the transferee and the information for the firearms being transferred be located on different pages of the 4473.
This change enables ATF to, by scanning a single page, associate the manufacturer, model, and serial number of the firearm transferred with the identity of the buyer. Were ATF inclined to create a database of firearm owners and the guns they have purchased, this change would make the process easier and less costly. It is, in fact, a literal consolidation of the information pertinent to the creation of a national firearm registry – a consolidation of the form which would be necessary for such an effort. It would not even be necessary for the forms to be centralized at one location if ATF wished to create a registry. Regional ATF offices could create small, localized databases or registries by simply scanning one page instead of many.
Without a doubt, ATF will respond to this conspiracy theory mumbo-jumbo with a dry reference to the Congressional prohibition on the “consolidation or centralization” of records that would lead to a database. But we need not work in the theoretical realm, for ATF has already been caught violating that law.
From 2007 to 2009, ATF implemented the Southwest Border Weapons of Choice program, also known as SWBWOC. ATF agents went to gun stores and scanned whichever Form 4473s they deemed necessary – pertaining to thousands of firearms – and created a database of the information they recovered. This violation was not made public until a GAO report was released in 2016. Even though ATF shut down the program in 2009 because it knew this was a violation of federal law, it didn’t get around to deleting the SWBWOC database until 2016.
It was stated in the GAO report that the data recovered during the SWBWOC program pertained only to the firearm and the dealer, not the purchaser, to make firearms tracing easier. Previous ATF statements, highlighted above, show that the firearm and dealer information are all that is necessary to make tracing guns used in crime easier. The current Form 4473 places firearm and dealer information on the same page, but the revised Form 4473 would place purchaser/transferee identification information between the firearm and dealer information.
If dealer and firearm information are all that’s needed to streamline traces, why does the firearm information need to be moved adjacent to the purchaser information – and away from the dealer information? Only if the firearm serial number needs to be directly associated with the name of the purchaser would the proposed layout of the form make sense.
Were another program like SWBWOC to be implemented, or if widespread reports of ATF IOIs scanning batches of 4473s unconnected to any criminal investigation at active FFLs are true, the identity of firearm purchasers would be linked to the serial number of the firearm they bought in the same image file. This is statutorily unacceptable.
ATF has publicly maintained for decades that the separation of information identifying the transferee and the firearms transferred, and the order by which the 4473 should be filled out, are important to demonstrate that ATF does not intend to create a registry of gun owners.
More recently, however, ATF has shown that in secret, it is willing to collect information about gun purchases in a manner not consistent with federal law. And now – in a major change disguised as a Paperwork Reduction Act revision announced the day after Christmas and without any explanation as to why – ATF wants to take the exact steps it previously avoided as being too close to the creation of a national gun registry. This ATF action, even if motivated by only the purest and most law-abiding of intentions, has the potential for a profound impact on the firearm industry. This modification cannot be allowed to proceed in its current form.
Vote GOP if you love your country, God & guns.
