Let the Firearms Tracing Center Do Its Job
Paranoia is a bad foundation for public policy.
High tech at the ATF’s national tracing center.
Photographer: Ricky Carioti/Washington Post/Getty Images
When law-enforcement agents seek information on guns found at crime scenes, they call the firearms tracing center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Agents at the tracing center, in West Virginia, then try to establish a chain of custody based on the gun’s serial number, manufacturer, distributor and retailer.
The agents pursue this task in the most inefficient, wasteful and time-consuming manner imaginable, manually searching records — about 800 million of them — because federal law purportedly prevents the center from organizing them into a searchable digital database.