[marktwain]

No traceable weapons at all? So, if Bill goes into Bubbuh’s fine guns, buys a gun, and knocks over a liquor store with said gun, how do we know who sold him the gun? How do we know they asked for ID or anything? This is confusing and seems utterly pointless.

Tracing is utterly pointless.

It is virtually never used to solve crimes.

A few guns may get returned to people they were stolen from.

That is the only thing it accomplishes that is legitimate.

The purpose of tracing is to be a precursor to registration.

The author is suggesting a point of sale check to determine if a gun may be legally sold. That is what we have now, except it does not work well and collects the pointless information for a supposedly non-existent registration system.

[cuban leaf]

I guess my point is, how do we know the gun store actually did the check?

A lot of these laws are a bit like locking your car. If a thief really wants your car, they will still get it, but it deters. Same thing here. The current system isn’t perfect, but it is a deterrent.

[Who is John Galt?]

Tracing is utterly pointless. It is virtually never used to solve crimes.

Bingo! If you believe Hollywood hype, tracing a firearm is a 5 minute process that catches the criminal 99% of the time, before the next commercial break. (Of course, Hollywood would also have you believe that all legal firearms sales involve "registration," whatever process that might be, as imagined by the script writer.)

Reality is a lot different - IIRC, commercial FFL records only go to the federal government when a license expires/terminates (i.e., in most cases, when the business closes permanently). And in most cases, those records (primarily the FFL's "bound books") are simply stored in cargo containers, due to a massive backlog.

So, tracing a weapon would likely start with the manufacturer (if still in business), leading to a distributor (ditto), then to a commercial FFL (ditto), then to 'John Smith' (the first owner, who may or may not still live at the same address, or even still be alive), etc. It's never quick, often completely futile, and rarely done.

The radical Left in this country would LOVE to require 100% mandatory registration, with real-time database searches, etc. But even if they got their wish, most traces would simply end with "theft of firearm reported by owner". (Because - big surprise - gun crimes are most often committed by criminals, not law-abiding gun owners.)

And that's assuming the database isn't corrupted, either accidentally or purposely. I remember reading years ago, that ATF had lost a bunch of their own records, regarding lawful owners of automatic weapons. (Tough luck for those gun owners!) And I think we all remember how Canadian gun owners dealt with mandatory firearms registration - they overwhelmed the government system, by registering every "gun" they owned (glue guns, grease guns, staple guns, etc.)...