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"Don’t dealers already record every individual firearm sale on a 4473?

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

Thanks for the information. Based on your link, it seems that the ATF is really lazy in that it's looking for the dealers to "flag" for them arbitrary criteria. (that can be amended/modified/expanded/etc.)

In any case, I can't imagine any legitimate dealer NOT reporting "suspicious" buying on their own volition.

I mean really...some clown comes in and asks, "What do you think this will do to someone at 10 feet?" Or, Mo and Achmed come in with $25,000 in cash and want to purchase 3 top-end AR's with Gen III night-vision optics and suppressors, but don't want anything to do with a Form 4. I'm sure every day hundreds of people are discouraged, or turned away completely for much less "subtle" signs something's amiss pre-purchase.

I'd also bet, that many are later visited by LEOs following up their hinky behavior reported by the shop. This extra reporting step is nonsense and has no real root in any kind of crime prevention. My 2¢