New Rules on Lost and Stolen Guns?

Apparently the Obama Administration are drafting new rules, along with ATF, who know a thing or two about losing track of guns, I hear:

Currently, gun dealers with a federal license are required to tell federal agents after they discover a firearm has gone missing, but they aren’t required to do routine checks.

“They can discover a gun missing today and have no idea when it went missing, which really makes that information useless to law enforcement,” said Chelsea Parsons, associate director of crime and firearms policy at the Center for American Progress.

The White House office has 90 days to review the proposed rule before releasing it to the public and allowing them to comment.
My guess is they will require inventory be taken on some ridiculous and burdensome regular interval. Anything to harass more dealers out of the business. What’s interesting it that appropriations riders prevent ATF from implementing such a rule. This is definitely something to keep an eye on.

6 thoughts on “New Rules on Lost and Stolen Guns?”

  1. honestly, i don’t see it as that much of a burden, considering that there’s a handful of bad FFLs that divert guns into the black market, happily conduct straw sales, and so on. it actually gets closer to street crime than any other stupid laws passed on the back of a shooting tragedy.

    1. The entire licensing scheme to regulate sales at point of purchase is a waste of time and energy. There is no evidence that the 1968 Gun Control Act has had any positive effect on reducing crime. It should be done away with.

      The intent of the act was fraudulent from the beginning, designed to implement a scheme to make a national gun registry in increments.

      All that the 1968 act accomplished was to make a new set of criminals who violate the provisions of the act with no evil intent or effect.

  2. This sounds at least somewhat analogous to the “Lost or stolen gun reporting” legislation that makes private citizens victims if their guns are burglarized. (If someone learned you had guns under the floorboards in your attic, and took one, how long before you’d know?)

    But in practical terms, I would expect dealers already do relatively frequent checks of their stock, so, I too would expect that the intent of the law is to make it SO frequent that it is burdensome.

    Not the same thing, I guess, but I remember in the Army we were required to do inspections of our shop equipment on a regular schedule and check it off in a log book. So we made up template stencils that could be overlaid the pages of the log book and ran felt-tip pens over the templates regularly. We were always up to date if their was a snap inspection.

    Any relationship between ink marks on paper and reality is always tenuous.

  3. Another illegal actby Obama. Regulations in violation of an appropriations restriction is actually a crime.

  4. When I had my FFL I had a small shop with about a dozen guns at any one time. It wasn’t hard to keep track.
    Big stores I bet would be hard pressed to notice a single gun missing right away. Unless they caught the guy in the act.
    If this doesn’t turn out to be a daily inventory I’d be surprised.
    I’ve talked with some current FFL holders and I can’t believe how much worse the regs are just since the late 90’s, another 20 year’s and you may not be able to find a dealer within 100 miles of you…..

    If at all.

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