Come with me on a journey to the National Tracing Center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms -- a journey that, thanks to the gun lobby, is also a journey to the past:
... Just last month, President Obama signed an executive order requiring federal law enforcement to trace every gun they seize, but how that's done is like taking a step back in time....
"It's slow and tedious," said Special Agent Charlie Houser, ATF National Tracing Center director.
Special Agent Houser runs the ATF's National Tracing Center. Last year, his team of about 400 traced more than 344,000 guns the old-fashioned way....
Federal law prohibits keeping a government database of gun owners. When law enforcement requests a trace, employees like Deena Jackson jump on the phone, calling the manufacturer and then the retailers until the owner is identified. Sometimes they're on the phone for five and a half hours out of an eight-hour day....
That’s a lot of phone calls, and it's harder if the gun dealer goes out of business. Those records are sent to the National Tracing Center. They receive more than one million records each month. Most are stored on micro-film or scanned, but they have to be searched by hand. There are 5,000 to 8,000 traces being worked on, on any given day
When wet records from Hurricane Katrina showed up years ago, employees laid them out individually and dried them in the parking lot....
Despite a process that seems more Wright Brothers than Google, they can turn an urgent trace in 24 hours. The rest take about five days, but with the Obama Administration pushing for police to trace all seized guns, the work load is poised to skyrocket while their budget has been flat since 2004....
Thirty years ago, Ed Meese said the ACLU was part of a "criminals' lobby." Tell me why I shouldn't regard the NRA as a criminals' lobby right now.
(Via Ryan J. Reilly.)