Pretty clearly our opponents are hoping people think all 62,000 lost guns ended up in the hands of criminals. ATF considers the gun lost if there’s no paperwork for it. A lot of times it’s just carelessness rather than deliberate malfeasance on the part of the dealer. Currently, the only method ATF has to enforce the paperwork requirements is license revocation. The ATF reform bill would change this.
Also interesting is Brady is hoping no one bothers to look up the number of guns sold during that three year period. The answer for that figure is about 40 million, according to NICS records for the past three years. If you do the math, this means the firearms industry loses track of about one tenth of one percent of inventory a year. That’s a pretty good track record. I’ll bet the postal service loses more mail than this. I’m also amused Paul feels the need to bring up Switzerland:
“We always hear from the other side that Switzerland has lots of guns and they’re safe,” Helmke said. “But in Switzerland you have to account for them — individuals even have to account for the number of bullets they have at the end of each month.”
Hey, if the government gives me a fully automatic M16 to keep at home, I’d promise to account for it too. But Switzerland only accounts for government owned weapons and ammunition. You can still buy and use both firearms and ammunition fairly freely, though forces are at work doing their best to change that.
So it would seem that misleading the public about our gun laws is no long sufficient. Now it appears they have to mislead the public about other country’s gun laws too.
Question: How many weapons did the FBI, AT, and police agencies ‘lose’ during this same time period… both their own and those found ‘missing’ from the evidence lockers?
My suspicion: Taken as a percentage of weapons handled, Federal/State/Local police have a far, far worse track record of accounting for their weapons than do FFL dealers.
“So it would seem that misleading the public about our gun laws is no long sufficient. Now it appears they have to mislead the public about other country’s gun laws too.”
And that’s a big reason why I’m done compromising with these morons. They are deceitful, despicable, and just plain liars.
Isn’t the government issued ammo only like 20 rounds as well? So you only have to account for one rifle and one box of ammo.
Where does that 40,000,000 guns sold in 3 years come from? Link please.
It’s NICS data. Google NICS stats.
Spade —
It’s a combat load of ammo that the Swiss giovernment issues each militiaman with his rifle. (“Combat load” is simply the standard rate of issue of what you would carry into battle at once — I think it’s 200 rounds for Swiss militia.)
You can have more (I believe the Swiss can buy government issued ammo from the government at cost), but you MUST have the basic combat load that the government paid for — those couple of hundred rounds are THEIRS.
SInce a retiring militiaman can buy his arms from the government at just about cost (only now they swap the full-auto FCG for a semi one, I understand), and it becomes just another normal “civilian” gun, I am pretty sure any Swiss citizen canbuy the GI discounted ammo as well.