ATF: New accord with Mexico will boost gun traces

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101006/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_mexico_weapons_trafficking ^

[Red in Blue PA]

MEXICO CITY – U.S. and Mexican officials are just now fully employing a gun-tracing program touted as a key deterrent to weapons-smuggling, nearly three years after it was first announced in Mexico and weeks after an inspector general's preliminary report called it underused and unsuccessful.

Not enough Mexican investigators had been trained on or had access to the electronic database designed to trace illegally seized weapons to origins in the U.S., a top official at Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said Wednesday.

"It doesn't mean the system is not working. It's not working as well as it can," said ATF deputy director Kenneth Melson. "The information was being submitted by people who didn't know how to trace guns."

He and Mexico Attorney General Arturo Chavez Chavez signed a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday that will increase to 30 a month the number of people trained to use the program, known as eTrace, an electronic database that can trace the manufacture, import, sale and ownership of guns.

It will also expand access to eTrace to the Attorney General's intelligence and data-gathering divisions across Mexico.

About 20 people have been trained to use eTrace in Mexico. U.S. and Mexican officials announced in January 2008 that the system would be introduced in Mexico, but it was not implemented in Spanish until last December.

[driftdiver]

So where do I go to get the gold plated automatic weapons they are tracing?

[muddler]

Isn’t against the law for the government to keep records of firearms owners?

[G Larry]

“...database designed to trace illegally seized weapons to origins in the U.S.”

What does that even mean?

Mexican officials have illegally seized weapons?

[Old Teufel Hunden]

It says in the article that they are tracing it back to the dealer, not the individual owner. My understanding is that dealers have to keep paperwork on serial numbers of guns they sold but not who they sold them to.

[muddler]

an electronic database that can trace the manufacture, import, sale and ownership of guns.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Okay, I missed the ownership part. But as I understand the law currently, it is against the law for gun dealers and the government (via NICS check) to keep records on gun owners. Just on what was sold.

[I Buried My Guns]

If it was a true, all-encompassing registry, they would find that most of these weapons come from either narcoterrorist farther south, like FARC, or (gasp!) the corrupt Mexican military and police.

But they do not want to find that, it is not their true goal. The real goal is to vilify america and thus get more funding from us so as to line the pockets of the Mexican elite.

Nothing to see here, same ol' corruption, move along.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Fortunately, most of those weapons don’t even have serial numbers so there is absolutely no way they can come from America. That’s the whole scam in this. The vast majority of the guns confiscated have no serial numbers. Not burned off, the guns never had serial numbers. Which proves conclusively they were not made or sold in the United States. Because our law requires all guns sold here to have serial numbers. The ones they are tracing are only a very small amount of the total guns being confiscated down there.

I also wonder how many of those guns they confiscate with serial numbers on them come from Mexican Army/Police (who buy their guns off of us) who desert and sell their guns to the thugs. And how many of these are illegally sold to regular Mexican citizens who fear for their lives and buy an illegally smuggled firearm to protect themself from the Drug thugs.

[DCBryan1]

Good Gawd....I'm sitting on a computer 1000 miles from the border. To save the taxpayes millions of dollars, I'll tell you where a majority of the drug cartel guns are coming from:

CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN ARMED FORCES ARMORIES!....whether they were made in New Hartford, CT Colt Factory, or Tula Arsenal, Russia, is mute.

[556x45]

Heres the bottom line. No matter how many $ are spent, how much data is stored away or how many of our rights are trampled the ATF will find a way to completely screw it up. They have a dismal track record of record keeping and perjuring themselves in court to cover it up. Like all gun tracing schemes this will wind up being little to no help solving crime. Then again one could say this sort of program is used in lieu of doing something substantive. Its a sort of look busy thing govt employees hide behind to cover ineffectiveness.

[Carry_Okie]

it is against the law for gun dealers and the government (via NICS check) to keep records on gun owners. Just on what was sold.

What the hell makes you think any bureaucracy would actually delete that data, especially after FIST?

This quote is condensed from the site

In 1996, a “Commission” for the Bureau of Justice Statistics developed a computer database, Firearms Inquiry Statistical Tracking (FIST), through which all information regarding gun purchases flowed: names, addresses, Social Security numbers, drivers license numbers, age, sex, race, height, weight, home and business phone numbers, firearm make, model, serial number, caliber and barrel length, the final outcome of the background check, and more! All of the above information is sent from the dealer to the Chief Law Enforcement Officer, who is supposed to retain the information for only 20 days, but is accountable to no one for simply holding it. - Source

I'd bank that if they were caught again they'd simply move it offshore.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"What the hell makes you think any bureaucracy would actually delete that data, especially after FIST?"

That's why we need to support local gun organizations and the NRA at the national level to fight these types of things. Our freedoms and liberties are always at risk when evil people are in positions of power. No one said that fighting for our freedoms and liberties was easy.

[B4Ranch]

>Not burned off, the guns never had serial numbers. <

How do you know this?

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"How do you know this?"

I've read this in past articles. The NRA had a huge article on this earlier in the year (I get the America's First Freedom magazine). They went into this. They are now putting their magazines online. They just started doing this and I'm not a subscriber to that. I don't know if they are converting past magazines to online or not.

[B4Ranch]

Thanks