Someone help me out here.
Don’t dealers already record every individual firearm sale on a 4473?
and,
Doesn’t the ATF already have access to every 4473 that’s been completed by a customer?
Further, how is it the duty of a private dealer to undertake enforcement powers (and I think it could be argued that data aggregation is a tool of enforcement) specifically delegated to the ATF?
I understand, but don’t agree with the concept of requiring the data to be collected, but requiring this “second level” data sifting, organization, manipulation, and reporting of the collected data is just laziness on the part of the ATF, as that is something THEY should be doing already! And if not, why not?
These questions should be addressed.
Yes
"Doesn’t the ATF already have access to every 4473 that’s been completed by a customer?"
The individual 4473(s) are stored with the dealer in a "bound book". The ATF has access to the forms at the individual dealer's business, not in a national database format. The ATF also has access to the information on the forms through a trace process seeking dealers to provide information from previous sales.
If a Federally licensed dealer sells 2 or more handguns in a 5 day period they must report the transfer(s) to the ATF via form 3310.4.
With this "emergency request" the ATF is trying to expand the requirement that dealers report multiple sales of long guns (ATF refers to "modern sporting rifles") where now that requirement only applies to pistols and revolvers.
Even though most news sources indicate that this new requirement would only apply to boarder states, that is probably reported inaccurately - this will apply to the whole nation.
See here for more info: ATF to Require Multiple Sales Reports for Long Guns
BATFE already gets flagged over multiple purchases, but IIRC, that was for handguns. This isn’t the camel’s nose, it’s his shoulders.