Interpol to Establish Arms Tracing System?

ATF already maintains a database of lost and stolen firearms, so that if one is traced, they can identify the rightful owner. Now it seems Interpol will be establishing a database of its own:

Modeled after INTERPOL’s Stolen and Lost Travel Document System which today contains more than 33 million entries, iARMS will feature a hit alarm to the country of report when a match is detected. Replacing INTERPOL’s existing firearms tracing system, it will redirect users to trace firearms not found in the database, thereby linking the two processes of searching a database of reported lost, stolen, smuggled and trafficked firearms with firearms tracing. It will also enable states to capture their own statistics for crime-trend analysis and to assist them in meeting reporting requirements. iARMS will be piloted to 20 countries in September.

Think you’ll ever see your firearm again if Interpol traces it? Think your gun will come out of the database, if it is returned? I think the Arms Trade Treaty is practically guaranteed to expand in scope if it’s brought into being.

Related posts (automatically generated):

  1. More on the Interpol Executive Order
  2. Radnor Tabling Lost and Stolen?
  3. More on the New Jersey Issue

2 thoughts on “Interpol to Establish Arms Tracing System?”

  1. We need to ensure that arms owned by US Persons never enter that database. Ever.

    I don’t like to say it, but “we need a law.”

    We need laws at the federal level protecting the private information of gun owners from anyone else, private or commercial. We would never keep and export a database of people and their religious views, so why do they think it OK to do the same with those exercising another fundamental right?

  2. Too late. It was discovered – was it during Gunwalker? – that ATF has been sharing gun owner information with foreign governments for ages now. Although our .gov is supposedly prohibited from creating or maintaining a database, there’s no law reg. I’m aware of that prohibits the JBT’s from sharing information they obtain with foreign powers. They can get this information in any number of ways. think of all the interactions that people have, or can have with ATF.

    Remember the “suspect gun database” made famous during project gunwalker? If your name of a s/n of a gun you previously owned comes up in any way to them, you are now a part of the “suspect gun database”. Other than storage constraints, it’s unknown to the public what guidelines are actually used to maintain this database and if it is ever pruned of “no longer suspect” records.

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