“The Act also forbade the U.S. Government agency from keeping a registry directly linking non-National Firearms Act firearms to their owners, the specific language of this law (Federal Law 18 U.S.C. 926 (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/926)) being:
‘No such rule or regulation prescribed [by the Attorney General] after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition be established. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.’
“Nevertheless, the ATF’s National Tracing Center (NTC) contains hundreds of millions of firearm tracing and registration records, and consists of several databases:
“1. Multiple Sale Reports. Over 460,000 (2003) Multiple Sales reports (ATF F 3310.4 - a registration record with specific firearms and owner name and address - increasing by about 140,000 per year). Reported as 4.2 million records in 2010.[16]
“2. Suspect Guns. All guns suspected of being used for criminal purposes but not recovered by law enforcement. This database includes (ATF’s own examples[citation needed]), individuals purchasing large quantities of firearms, and dealers with improper record keeping. May include guns observed by law enforcement in an estate, or at a gun show, or elsewhere.[citation needed] Reported as 34,807 in 2010.[16]
“3. Traced Guns. Over 4 million detail records from all traces since inception.[16] This is a registration record which includes the personal information of the first retail purchaser, along with the identity of the selling dealer.
4. Out of Business Records. Data is manually collected from paper out of business records (or input from computer records) and entered into the trace system by ATF. These are registration records which include name and address, make, model, serial and caliber of the firearm(s), as well as data from the 4473 form - in digital or image format. In March, 2010, ATF reported receiving several hundred million records since 1968...”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act
“sys·tem
“1.a set of things working together as parts of a mechanism or an interconnecting network.
Just a few nosy leftist individuals doing their thing is not a system.
Food for thought, true, but I get the impression that this is anything but the seamless digitized database that Lyndon Johnson sought back in 1968; in fact he was raging as he signed GCA ‘68 that the new law failed to inaugurate a national gun registry and federal licensing of owners.
The gungrabbers will never stop, this we know. But eight years of inaction on gun control by Obama, and forty years of frustration for Dianne Feinstein, don’t make repeal of the 2nd Amendment very likely.
Red Flag laws are a different story. Confiscation one citizen at a time.