Anyone else?
Report on a forum of ATF agents interviewing people who have bought more than five guns. Seems they’re trying to find out how these guns are getting into Mexico. If true, they’re using that gun registry we don’t have.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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May 15th, 2009 at 10:05 am
My understanding is that the BATFU have these mobile scanner thingys that they take to the FFL holders to scan the bound books. No doubt that the images get handed over to some sleazy company like Choicepoint. The private company then keeps the records and creates that gun registry we don’t have. The BATFU then “buy-back” (in quotes because their previous ownership is questionable) aggregated focused data for the interviews.
At least that’s how I suspect it happens.
May 15th, 2009 at 10:12 am
They must have hidden them from me pretty good during all those inspections I’ve been present for.
The last one, they did bring a small portable photocopier for photocopying the couple dozen 4473s that they randomly pulled for “grading” compliance (You can’t doodle or underline or make red X’s on the original forms because they are legal documents.)
I have read more incredible frog doodle and bullshit about what happens during BATFEIEIO inspections on gun boards, all of it written by people whose brother’s cousin’s nephew was in the gun store buying a box of .22 the week after they were audited and heard Cletus tell Jed that…
May 15th, 2009 at 10:16 am
“Do you have a warrant?”
“No. But we would appreci-”
“Go fuck yourselves.”
(Slams door in asshole’s face)
May 15th, 2009 at 10:22 am
I am suddenly thinking about the Soviet Union’s show trials but can’t quite think of why . . .
May 15th, 2009 at 10:33 am
He (merchant of death employee) described them as “copiers, but without paper”. He’s not particularly computer literate. Second hand, sure. But I did quiz him extensively.
Yours were copiers, that printed hardcopy?
May 15th, 2009 at 10:36 am
Martha Stewart demonstrated why you don’t talk to the feds ever without a lawyer present. Lying to a federal agent in the course of an investigation appears to be a felony.
Flip side is of course that you’ve committed a crime at some point without you knowing, so if you piss them off they throw the book at you and see what sticks.
Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
Seems to me to be slightly safer to take the “talk to my lawyer” route, though.
May 15th, 2009 at 11:16 am
I second Matt Groom.
“Come back with a warrant”. It’s even on my door mat.
May 15th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
More than five guns in what period?
What area of the country? Southwest particularly?
Said inquiries started when?
Inquiring minds want to know.
May 15th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Five gets you ten that they were working off 3310’s.
May 15th, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Matt: If you make the warrant demand, they will leave … and then someone will let you know your FFL is canceled for non-compliance.
If you have an FFL, you are under their administrative rule.
May 15th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I say BUUUUUUUUUUULShite, or atleast that ther is way more to this story. If all “borderstate” ffl’s were interviewd, their ecords suck, being one and knowing others no one has had this that i am aware of.
Jason
May 15th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
I just re-read the linked article and perhaps you are right. The guy did say handguns, but he never stated one way or another that he made multiple purchases.
Since they are border states and not say Maryland, there’s less of a chance that they got the data from the state’s database (or the states database over in Choicepoint’s data mine) but I’m not going to pretend I know state law in all 50 states.
May 16th, 2009 at 8:57 am
Big collectors that do a lot of transfers off Gunbroker and whatnot will often come in and pick up two or three acquisitions at a time just to save trips to the gun store.
We had one guy get his TICS checks delayed all of a sudden because I guess the TBI or BATFEIEIO thought he was smuggling all those Colt Officer’s Models and Police Positive Targets to MS-13 or something…
May 16th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
If you compile all the info in the forum posts, the guy’s been buying numbers of handguns using the Texas CHL to avoid NICS calls. The FFL got audited, so ATF has a list of guns from one guy, all bought without NICS.
Texas, border, handgun, NICSless, etc. I’d probably check on it too, thinking about it.
May 16th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
EDIT TO ABOVE: I’d check because of the numbers, not the NICSless check.
If I were to think like a fed, that looks an awful lot like what a short-term trafficer’s purchases would look like, especially if I didn’t know anything about the guns that were being bought. Remember that ATF is predominantly a paper-chasing agency.
May 16th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
I happen to personally know the gentleman in this incident. He’s a respected businessman, an avid shooter and gun collector, and a pretty damn nice guy. You all can call bullshit, you can impugn his truthfulness, you can make him out to be a raging lunatic and his piece to be tin hat foolery, but you cannot take away his honor or his friends. And Tam, this story is a FIRST PERSON ACCOUNT.
May 17th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
Hi guys, heard you linked to me and thought I would give the latest… Tam are the 3310’s the form that I am referring to?
Ah ha! I have gotten the real story out of an ATF agent as well as my local Death Merchant! Seems my dealer was not audited, nor any of the usual local place I frequent, with the exception of a pawn shop.
Turns out it was not the 4473 they were going off of, but the form the dealers have to fill out when you buy multiple guns in a 5 day period. The ATF have plenty of records of that! Seems your buddy CC buys his guns in clumps and that is what landed me on the investigation list.
We had a straw purchaser and his two mules caught the other day in Buda as well…..
I must say I am not happy still, but I at least know what really happened. I discovered a buddy’s brother is in the ATF and I got the story confirmed, so if you don’t buy your guns in clumps and do it several times I think you will not be on that list.