Any gun bought from a dealer or at a gun show is , in fact, registered and records are accessible to ATF.
Look up National Tracing Center. Reagan did us a huge favor with the Firearms Owner Protection Act (except concerning machine guns). It’s a paperwork nightmare for the Feds due to that law.
There’s a neat vid called IIRC “the Federal Bureau of Way Too Many Guns”. Stacks & stacks of boxes of paper 4473s. The director bitches throughout that FOPA makes his job difficult.
IIRC, a paper 4473 doesn’t go to the Feds until the gun store goes out of business.
Yes, unpapered guns are good & I’ve got a few. But I say again, Feds are human too and therefore neither omniscient nor omnipotent. They have homes to go home to as well.
A local talk show host lost a bet and was obliged to drive through our state on secondary roads with a bumper sticker reading,
“I’m a gay urban liberal and I’m here to take away your guns!”