Would you care to guess how many machine guns ATFE-NFA cannot account for?
ATFE-NFA are responsible for maintaining the NFRTR, which records all the legally owned NFA items in the country. It was unconstitutionally established in 1934, and it's accuracy has been questionable from the beginning.
NFA items records are supposed to be updated every time the item changes ownership, it is the ATFE-NFA's job to keep those records.
ATFE-NFA still shows thousands of NFA items as still being registered to the same person who originally registered them in 1934!
ATFE-NFA have the entire resources of the federal government at their disposal, yet audit's reveal the NFRTR has an error rate of about 5%!
When do we close down the ATFE due to THEIR shoddy record keeping?
Many more details, including congressional testimony confirming my contention above, can be found at http://www.nfaoa.org
What's that got to do with this gun dealer?
There is a ATF training video that has the head of the firearms division admitting to as much as a 50% error rate in NFA records, but ordering agents to testify that the data base is 100% correct.
They actually caught agents shreading cases NFA transfer papers instead of filing them a while back when they were transfering from hard files to computor.
I don't have links at hand but might be able to find them, they have been all over the gunboards the last couple of years.
Soon??
BTW, It's BATFE. Before they were BATF, even though like to be pretend they were a TLA (Three Letter Agency) they were a Four Letter Agency, and are now a Five Letter Agency. (Although to be fair, organizationally they are at the same level on the DoJ org chart as the FBI and DEA).