Inside the Federal Bureau of Way Too Many Guns

http://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns

by Someone • 10 years ago

58 115 10 years ago

Someone• 10 years ago

"He has to have the files printed out, and then the ladies take pictures of them and store them that way. Anything that allows people to search by name is verboten."

If that is the only issue, I would construct a database that maps (gun type, serial number) to physical location ((microfiche, page, row) or (binder, page, row)). That should speed up look ups by (gun type, serial number) tremendously, but still would require one to go through all physical data to search by name.

pjc505• 10 years ago

I would construct a database

.. and that's how you get thousands of armed protestors demanding that your organisation be shut down and your records destroyed. It doesn't matter what the proposed contents of the database are. The politics is extremely volatile and not very rational.

(Even the IRA were finally persuaded to put their weapons "permanently beyond use", in the language of the peace agreement.)

DamnYuppie2• 10 years ago

Yes it is very political, but I disagree that it isn't rational. The stance is that registration leads to confiscation. This has been proven time and time again. And no we don't want to be like some countries that have registrations and you have to store your weapons in some offsite facility and can only access them for certain times of the year with approved ammunition.

intended2• 10 years ago

As the article elaborates, thats not the only issue, but at the end it shows how great the guy leading it is

He got to the National Tracing Center in 2005. He never expected to stay. It was a stepping stone to maybe a cushier deal maybe up at headquarters in D.C.
But then he started to think about ways to work with the antiquated system—and make it more efficient. Would it even be possible? “You mind if I do the whiteboard thing?” he says, standing up.
‘Well, that looks like what I'm looking for.’ Six Sigma, you know that kind of stuff?'
“I just found it at Barnes & Noble,” he says, in a tone suggesting that this shit is basic.
He uses the blue marker. “I mean, I know that the average person can type in 1,600 gun descriptions per eight-hour day,” he says, scrawling the numbers. “Why? Because I time-and-motion studied them. And then—I don't know if you know anything about queuing theory.
Do you have one line with three cash registers—or do you have three lines come into one?” Arrows, circles. He's moved on to the black marker.
“There's a whole science of mathematics behind queuing theory. So what we did was, I sat around trying to figure out what would be the best way to queue the traces up and punch them through....
And now? Despite no increase in budget, no new technology, no new staff: “I'm doing twice as many guns, twice as fast, and almost twice as accurately as we did when I got here in 2005.”

lwhalen2• 10 years ago

Good. The gov't has no more a right to track my guns as they do my book purchases. "Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a gov't agency.

pjc505• 10 years ago

But you're OK with the car registration system? And the cell phone IMEI database? And the no-fly list?

Edit: I should have been more general with the "you". Only the opposition to the gun database has succeeded. There's no general conversation about privacy; there's no coalition of pro-privacy orgs with a consistent view on what should and should not be stored in databases. Why is this?

DamnYuppie2• 10 years ago

As someone who agrees with the OP I am definitely not a fan of the no-fly list and other centralized registration databases.

beachstartup• 10 years ago

But you're OK with the car registration system? And the cell phone IMEI database? And the no-fly list?

uh, did he say he was?

i'm sorry, did i neglect to read half the article, or half his comment, where these things are mentioned?

unethical_ban• 10 years ago

Cell phone database is questionable, and cars are for those on the road. And I'm not liking the idea that in the near future, plate scanners will know where I'm going all the time. I should be able to move without the government knowing.

rimantas• 10 years ago

Of course, book is a deadly weapon.

jolynch• 10 years ago

People don't use books to kill, maim and disfigure other people, they use guns.

There are zero logical reasons to prohibit a database that maps gun metadata to the gun record (search by name is actually detrimental to proper investigations). I've heard lots of emotional reasons, but I haven't heard a single well reasoned logical argument. Just a lot of reductio ad absurdum.

douche4• 10 years ago

They can use books to inspire other people to kill, maim and disfigure other people.

chris_va4• 10 years ago

Well, not that I agree with it entirely, but here's my understanding of the argument (which might be entirely wrong):

Going way back, the 2nd amendment entitles US citizens to own firearms because it's supposed to be a government for the people, by the people. If the people no longer support the government, they can revolt (ala american revolution). At the time, citizenry owning firearms was sufficient for a revolution to be successful. See 3rd amendment, as well.

So, the 2nd amendment was really an escape clause for citizens if they no longer wish to support the government. It just happened to be written as a gun measure. Having a governmental database controlling gun ownership thus violates that intention.

jasonjei4• 10 years ago

Hopefully, you don't own a car or motorcycle; you'll want to stick with bicycles, because the government already tracks your vehicle purchases.

What about property purchases? Without a county domain registrar on titled property, it's your word versus somebody else's that you own your property. You won't want to buy real property since the government tracks that too (and for centuries) and it's publicly searchable. The government jackboots will say you don't own the land you stand on without that, just like the thugs of the InterNIC/ICANN do regularly with centralized DNS. In short, don't buy real property.

You'll also not want to buy a plane ticket, as those are tracked as well.

Don't open a bank account--your bank will regularly report about you, especially large transfers of money. Find a nice hole in the ground on your untitled real property and convert to metal. Or use Bitcoin if you trust the system enough.

Definitely don't use a cell phone--they can find you.

ctrlc-root2• 10 years ago

I use most of these in order to function in society. That does not preclude me from not wanting them to be tracked. As you so neatly pointed out the alternative is to not live at all.

HarryHirsch2• 10 years ago

The encouraging thing is this: there is a strong sentiment in the US that the government should not track firearm purchases, there are laws in place to that effect, and consequently it is very difficult to track down the owner of a registered gun. The political process works!

Now, if we just could de-fang Google, Facebook, the advertising networks that track users across websites and all the other data aggregators!

onetwotree7• 10 years ago

The obvious difference is that the gun industry is opposed to making it easy to track down guns. There are no powerful financial interests fighting for our data privacy.

splintercell5• 10 years ago

Home come gun industries in other countries fought against gun laws? Maybe it's something to do with the fact that Gun lobby is powerful because we're a huge gun owning country with a constitutionally defined right to keep and bear arms.

People don't become alcoholic because powerful beer industry spent money on preventing laws against alcohol.

hga23• 10 years ago

It's not the gun industry that's powerful financially, or more important, electorally, which I'll note is represented by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), it's the population of gun owners, only a fraction of which belong to the NRA at any one time, that have achieved this result.

Money's important, but you can ask the most recent stark example, Jeb Bush, just how far it gets you without votes.

And I'll add that only happened after there was a sufficient trail of dead or maimed bodies, enough atrocities committed by the BATFE starting in the early '70s (new law + sugar price supports putting their "revenuers" out of a job when moonshine became a hobby), that we got riled up enough to achieve this. As of yet, our lack of data privacy hasn't produced enough of these.

intended2• 10 years ago

Charlie is now my hero, he applied queuing theory to improve time take to identify guns.

That's the right kind of person (comp sci and Intelligence background), using science to deal with a kafkaesque situation (no computers allowed) and managing to improve outcomes.

jasonjei4• 10 years ago

I loved reading how they optimized the search problem. Charlie has CS education, the way they sorted their tuples and organized their data (as long as it's not by name!) reduced query times. Ironically, a CS education can help you optimize those processes even where computers are not allowed.

HarryHirsch2• 10 years ago

What's ironic about this? Computer Science is the study of algorithms, not the study of whatever language is en vogue today. For the latter, you attend Coding Bootcamp.

nzp• 10 years ago

Nothing ironic about that. To paraphrase Hal Abelson, computer science is as much about computers as biology is about microscopes.

dalke6• 10 years ago

What is the 1986 law which says "No searchable database of America's gun owners"?

Does that mean the paper files can't be sorted alphabetically by name?

Does it exclude more complex paper-based search systems, like needle-sorted edge-notched cards?

Or does it only refer to computer databases?

escapologybb• 10 years ago

I wondered this, I'm not an American so the whole gun thing totally mystifies me. I don't think anyone should be allowed to own a gun, not the government, criminals, and certainly not people with mental illnesses. That being a somewhat naive hope then I think restricting them as much as possible is the thing to do.

However, I'm not an American so I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do with your own country. You're welcome! /s

But at what point does it become a database and searchable, does he have to deliberately pile up the boxes of receipts higgledy-piggledy lest they accidentally fall into some sort of organised and therefore searchable order? Seems crazily broad, no?

Edited to Add: Wow, form 4473 doesn't get sent to any kind of centralised place until the gun shop that sold the particular con goes out of business. So this to my mind means a family gun business this been open for 100 years has every 4473 form they've ever written since the law came in, am I reading that right? Surely that can't be right? As in not correct, I don't mean morally, I mean that's just crazy to have a central database that doesn't centralise regularly.

kabdib3• 10 years ago

Firearms have been nicknamed "equalizers" for a reason: An 80-year-old grandmother can successfully hold off an assault by someone many times her strength, size and agility. Get rid of guns and you now leave a large subset of society defenseless.

Personally I think the 4473s should be destroyed after a reasonable time, and never subject to bulk capture. It's no business of the government's what purchases I make.

hga23• 10 years ago

What is the 1986 law which says "No searchable database of America's gun owners"?

The Firearm Owners Protection Act, this referenced part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm_Owners_Protection_Act#...

dalke6• 10 years ago

Thanks! The "any system" is very broad. Look like I wont be making a side-business selling them a bunch of restored IBM sorting machines.

(Speaking of which, sorting machines and punched card I/O is an active hobby market. Apparently many people are looking for IBM punched cards. I think there's enough of a market should a small paper company want to sell them again.)

Redoubts• 10 years ago

No, says the gun lobby. It would give the government a tool to confiscate our guns. The idea of a gun registry is the great fever dream that lies at the heart of gun-control conspiracy theories: Government evildoers are going to attack us any day now. We have to be ready. (And you don't give the enemy an inventory of all your weapons!)

I mean, I constantly see the concerns of gun owners derided like this, but I've never seen a good reason why they shouldn't be scared of a national registry. The debate has been purely adversarial for quite some time, so I'm not sure why/how both sides should come together for a good-faith compromise.

bjt2n39043• 10 years ago

Thanks for recognizing the adversarial nature of the debate. Historically, registration precedes confiscation. Australia comes to mind.

As a gun owner, I'm not sure how there can be "compromise" with "universal registration", especially when politicians are actively touting confiscation as an option on the table.

Something I'd liken this to is Obama's "Key Escrow". Apple holds half the key to the encryption, The Feds hold the other. Look, a reasonable compromise! We promise that we won't do anything evil.

hga23• 10 years ago

Australia comes to mind.

You can add California, SKSes due to an AG reinterpretation of the law, New York state, and right now Massachusetts is going through such an event due to their AG.

And as you note, it's not like there's any lack of public figures including politicians who are touting outright confiscation, including those praising the Australian model, which include one of the two major party nominees for this presidential election.

"You aren't paranoid if they are out to get you."

chiph2• 10 years ago

Gun owners (I am one) regard compromise on the subject as they're the ones giving something up. The people on the other side of the table aren't sacrificing anything.

It's like your boss asking you to come in and work on Saturday for the good of the team. But won't pay you for your time.

dsfyu404ed3• 10 years ago

It's more like having a team of mostly ok workers (all citizens) and one screw up who never shows up to work (violent criminals who commit crime with guns) and then making everyone come in on Saturday because they need to account for the work the no-show didn't do. Then you exempt HR and overhead staff (non gun owners) because you don't need them to be involved in that particular work. Then you exempt the HR and overhead staff because they have no skin in the game and as predicted the no-show no-shows. Of course the people who actually have skin in the game and do what they're supposed to are salty about it.

pjc505• 10 years ago

The people on the other side of the table aren't sacrificing anything.

Their lives and safety, on a daily basis?

It's the other way round, really: universal gun ownership involves the sacrifice of thousands of lives annually. Admittedly so does car ownership and OTC tylenol, but in those contexts we can admit the tradeoff and seek to minimise the cost.

onetwotree7• 10 years ago

From the other side, I also feel like the adversarial nature of the debate has gotten completely out of hand. Democracy is all about compromise, but when it comes to guns people just go off the rails.

Here's how it feels from my point of view: I'd like it if the police could really just run a serial number (perhaps with judicial oversight, warrants, etc.), like they do on T.V.

But the right takes my genuine desire to take some sensible measures to reduce violent crime and turns it into a desire to take away all of the guns and commit some atrocity.

It's like I'm asking you if I could use your cellphone for a second to call for a ride, and you treat me like I'm definitely planning to steal it. Perhaps a sensible measure in some contexts, but it is always a fundamental statement about how little you trust me, and frankly insulting.

Many on the left, of course, do the same thing, although obviously I'm not in as good of a position to describe it.

Somehow we need to restore our trust in one another's shared values. It seems to me that a heavily partisan media has done the most to erode this trust (for example, the vicious attacks on the fundamental values of Bush and Obama), but there might be more too it.

hga23• 10 years ago

Democracy is all about compromise

Can you tell us what you are willing to give up to gain any of your goals?

Compromise does not mean only we give up something, but not quite as much as was asked from us at the beginning of the process of drafting a law.

bjt2n39043• 10 years ago

my genuine desire to take some sensible measures to reduce violent crime

How is a database a sensible measure? Even in your example (like on TV), the crime has already been committed.

We see this in the real world too. After the Pulse massacre, they looked up the gun. Sure enough, it belonged to the shooter, who passed background checks, took training courses, and went through psych evaluations. All of the above (frequently touted) measures were completely ineffective at preventing or even mitigating the disaster.

I too have a genuine desire to stop mass shootings, but the genuine-ness of my desires doesn't necessarily mean effective-ness.

splintercell5• 10 years ago

My rationale behind not supporting any compromise is simple: the other side does not want me to have any guns.

Imagine if the most anti-gun position in America was still very pro-gun people like say Charleton Heston, then I'd be willing for a compromise. I would be ok with building a registry where the police can search for guns.

But the fact is, we know that Hillary Clinton talks about how Australia successfully got rid of all its guns. We know that the ultimate goal isn't a happy compromise in the middle.

This is why the 'cold dead hands' mentality exists in America.

It's like imagine if Republicans want a national registry of people by their religion. Or national ethnicity database. The Democrats wouldn't (and shouldn't) give an inch on that.

karmacondon• 10 years ago

Insane. No politician is calling for a complete elimination of guns. That idea has never been proposed or discussed seriously in any way. I don't think even the fringe of the anti-gun lobby wants to get rid of all guns.

This is probably one of the most successful strawmen in all of US politics. I don't think anyone on either side actually believes that the government would ever try to confiscate all guns

fredgrott• 10 years ago

I got a stupid question from a stupid American(me):

What would happen if ammo was taxed the same way cigarettes are in the USA?

An example, someone buys a semi-automatic gun or automatic weapon...well than the ammo is taxed at a modest 5000%.

You can have the guns all you want..but if you want to use them you pay the right cost to the degree of dangerous of the gun weapon...ie automatic ammo is taxed higher than say shotgun shells.

State, both local, US states and federal would be exempt from the ammo tax.

douche4• 10 years ago

Reloading would become an even bigger deal than it already is. Already, anybody that shoots seriously and goes through a lot of ammunition will usually get setup with reloading equipment, because buying the powder, primers and bullets, with reused brass, is at least half as expensive as buying new ammunition.

Also, there isn't a meaningful distinction between ammunition used in semi-automatic vs other types. 9mm is 9mm is 9mm, whether you're shooting it out of a Glock or a revolver or a single-shot target pistol. Same thing with rifle ammunition - NATO 5.56x45 tends to be what a lot of AR-15 variants, the so-called "assault weapons" are chambered in, but there's no reason you couldn't also have a bolt-action hunting rifle in the same caliber.

hga23• 10 years ago

5.56 NATO was derived from the .223 Remington cartridge developed for the original AR-15, which was derived from the .222 Remington varmint cartridge and intended to be between it and the .222 Remington Magnum.

My father's primary hunting partner when I started hunting had a .222 bolt action rifle; if this had happened later, it would undoubtedly be a .223 due to the reduced costs of the 5.56/.223 ecosystem.

ctrlc-root2• 10 years ago

You can't always separate ammo from how it is used. I can fire a 9 mm round from a single shot, semi-automatic, or fully automatic weapon just the same. My hunting shotgun is actually a semi-automatic and that's not uncommon.

On a side note, manufacturing guns and ammo at home is not incredibly hard. Granted, you won't get the same result as if you bought something from the store, but they will function all the same.

c22• 10 years ago

How would this fix anything? Shooting ranges would just become a hobby for the rich. Meanwhile anyone planning to go shoot up a school or a church can just max out a couple credit cards cause it's not like they're gonna have to worry about the bill.

Pinckney• 10 years ago

Suppose a state decides they're spending too much money on their court system. What would you say if they instituted a 5000% tax on criminal defense services?

What would you say if a state decided to impose a 5000% tax on abortion medicines?

What would you expect the courts to say about these taxes?

(Incidentally, this is not so different than the Mariana Islands' $1000 handgun tax. I thought this was currently being litigated, but I can't find anything confirming that.)

tombrossman• 10 years ago

The end result would be that responsible gun owners who wished to practice at a shooting range could no longer afford to, and criminals would continue uninterrupted because they would just steal the ammo they need.

A variation on this theme already happens with cigarettes, when one state raises tobacco taxes, bootlegging from neighbouring states goes up.

Now the responsible gun owners are no longer a very good shot, criminals are roaming around with plenty of ammo (which they need because they often have terrible aim), what could possibly go wrong?

hga23• 10 years ago

I'll add to the other commentators that we manufacture more than 12 billion rounds a year, and import quite a few more (especially as of late more .22LR, rimfire production is pretty much fixed at 3 billion per year due to manufacturing dangers and realities, including the reluctance of US manufacturers to buy new capital equipment that can only be used for it).

It would also strong discourage responsible gun ownership, by discouraging people from maintaining their skills. There are, what, way over 12 million who have concealed carry licenses in the US (the number is growing very rapidly and 12 or 12.5 is only the latest and a bit old), more and more states dropping license requirements (it's up to around 10, with Missouri likely to be added this month), and semi-automatic handguns are the overwhelmingly preferred design to carry for many good ergonomic, reliablity and effectiveness reasons.

Legally owned full-auto weapons simply aren't a problem, there's 2 known crimes committed with them, and one of those was by a police officer.... With their numbers limited by a 1986 law to around 200,000, and the inherent cost of firing lots of rounds from them, they're already mostly "a hobby for the rich" as c22 points out. Something you can see echoed in the former Democratic governor of Kansas Kathleen Sebelius signing a law making them legal again after many many decades.

splintercell5• 10 years ago

You can have the guns all you want..but if you want to use them you pay the right cost to the degree of dangerous of the gun weapon...ie automatic ammo is taxed higher than say shotgun shells.

Personal security isn't a 'hobby', it's a right. A right which isn't acknowledged by most other countries, nor by a significant chunk of our population. Rights shouldn't be prohibited by taxes. Rights shouldn't only be accessible to rich people.

You don't think self-defense is a right, you see guns as a problem (like Cigarette), so your solution is the same (tax).

Don't try to circumvent the real topic here, do you think people have a right to defend themselves using guns or not, if not then try to convince me about it, instead of suggesting 'fixes'.

carsongross• 10 years ago

The reality is that this is putting the very people whom guns are supposed to protect us against in charge of their regulation. The second amendment is there not for hunting or sporting, but rather to maintain a state militia, literally a state-level military:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

You can see this underlying (and, to many modern folks, uncomfortable) reality being admitted to implicitly when they go after long guns first, despite the fact that long guns account for a vanishingly small amount of total gun crime. Long guns are excellent for challenging an overreaching central government, however.

kabdib3• 10 years ago

Registries in the US have very poor compliance rates; under 5% for a rifle registry in CA in the 1990s (the Atty General called the registry "a failure"), and a similar rate for a more recent attempt to register long guns in Connecticut.

The government can run through the physical paperwork (held by dealers), but it's slow, inaccurate and inefficient. Many people think that is a feature.

[The funny thing about "assault weapon" bans is that of two firearms that are functionally identical, one will be banned because it merely looks evil -- black and creepy looking -- while the other will be explicitly allowed in legislation. It's political posturing that just creates more criminals and does nothing to address the underlying causes of violence, namely failed socio-economic policies and the war on drugs, which creates a nice, solid economic base for gangs].

bjt2n39043• 10 years ago

"I've got this form in my hand here. I'm looking at the form. I can tell you for a fact right now the purchaser and possessor are the same person."

Seems that either the author doesn't understand how the 4473 works, or Charlie. Most likely both. A Form 4473 defines the possessor of the firearm like the IP address defines the user of the Internet connection.

greggyb• 10 years ago

I read some into this and could certainly be wrong:

The possessor is determined by the gun being found by local law enforcement finding an individual, A, in posession of the gun in question.

A trace request is submitted. The gun (in police custody after being found in A's possession) is associated with a form 4473. That 4473 is found, and the original purchaser is indicated to be A.

The quotes excerpted in this article seem to be missing a lot of context and to have come from longer discussions that are noted to be emotional in many cases. I am interpreting that quote as part of a longer conversation where the speaker is jumping around a lot.

The whiteboard section clearly indicates that Charlie does not necessarily express his thoughts linearly and in an easy-for-the-author-to-follow manner.

Eric_WVGG• 10 years ago

Would a "bot approach" to searching these records work?

Say you were looking for (to use the article's example) a 9-mm semi-automatic Beretta 92 sold at Annie's Get Your Gun, serial number ABC123.

You have the scans of all the Form 4473s put into folders (or maybe not, maybe just everything in a dump), and tell the bot to go looking for any form that matches this pattern. Importantly, the bot would NOT cache or structure data for later lookups; every search would be virgin.

You'd have a lot of false positives (the O 0 and I 1 problem), it would not be terribly helpful at handwritten forms, but it could reduce a pile of a million records down to, hopefully, a few hundred or thousand.

NKCSS3• 10 years ago

I guess it's me, but this while system and all those scared comments here of people afraid to have the gov. Know which guns you have, completely baffel me. I expected some smart individuals here, being able to recognise how weird this whole attitude is, but I am sorely dissapointed.

hga23• 10 years ago

Smart is orthogonal to this issue, unless you consider it a synonym for wise (and few young smart people are also wise, something that's been notes for millennia).

Educated or knowledgeable is all you need, those who know about the history of confiscations and often genocides following gun registration are of course afraid to let the government know.

Or let me ask you, how do you know the government will stay as minimally benevolent as it already is? Especially with it's trending not so benevolent in the last few decades, as, for example, peace officers morphed into warrior cops? The War on (Some) Drugs, anyone?? What else might dissuade you of this notion you implicitly admit to?

Weird? Disappointed? We're out-grouped? Maybe so, but that doesn't mean we're actually wrong, you know.

NKCSS3• 10 years ago

Maybe it's because I live in a country where I am not afraid of the government and see the state of the US Vs. countries here in Europe where having a firearm is prohibited; I just don't get it. It feels the same like telling a 3 year old it's not allowed to handle a chefs knife on their own, but it gets mad because dad said it was OK, it will get mad if you take it way because someone said it was OK before, even though it's not the smart thing to do or in the best interest of the child.

Overtonwindow• 10 years ago

Interesting article but I felt like the author put too much emphasis on making a caricature of Charlie Houser. Starting from the first photo. It just set a strange tone for the whole article.

Inside the Federal Bureau of Way Too Many Guns

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