"Gun shops are subjected to pointless paperwork and nothing has proven it deters crime in any way."
IMO, detering crime is not the point. The paperwork and laws are making it hard to stay in the business which is their purpose.
"That's wrong in a free country. "
They are working on that as well.
You are absolutely correct. Most gun laws don't have any effect on crime. Years ago there was a requirement to keep log books on ammo sales. I don't remember now how or why that record keeping requirement got dropped. Recently a cop shop I used to work in went out of business, and a friend there gave me the old ammo log books as a souvenir. I went through them remembering names and faces from years past, and found a lot of my own entries in those books. I keep them as a reminder of how screwed up thinks can get, like the proposal some idiot in Congress made to put serial numbers on bullets.
The point I'm trying to make is that an individual dealer cannot, absolutely cannot, try to push and shove the BATF into seeing things his way. The dealer cannot, absolutely cannot, break the rules 900+ plus times and expect to prevail against the BATF.
Try to convince a state trooper not to give you a ticket after he clocked you at 100 mph, with no driver's license, no insurance card, and an open beer in one hand. It's the same kind of situation, and no amount of attitude and chutzpah is going to save you from getting whacked.