Records of background checks of prospective firearms purchasers help law enforcement deter fraud and detect dealers who might be providing false information about the purchaser of a firearm. Some states, however, have enacted laws to close these gaps in federal law. Dealer sales records are not collected in a federal central database. While federal law requires licensed firearms dealers to collect and maintain sales records for at least 20 years, this requirement does not extend to private sellers. Records are most useful to law enforcement when they are collected in a central database and retained indefinitely. For example, sales records can enable officers to identify the last retail purchaser of a firearm that has been used in a crime, which can lead to the identification and prosecution of violent criminals. Backgroundįirearm sales and background check records can be used by law enforcement in a number of ways to solve gun crimes and identify gun sellers and purchasers who are violating state and federal gun laws. States can-and should-take important steps to fill the gaps in federal law. While federal law requires licensed gun dealers to maintain sales records, it also requires the FBI to destroy approved background check records, hampering law enforcement efforts. “Now I'm doing this.” He points to a framed letter from the Floyd County, Indiana, police, thanking him for the valuable role he played in nabbing the monster who beat up the 96-year-old man.Accurate records of gun sales help law enforcement solve crimes and keep guns out of the hands of ineligible individuals.įirearm sales and background check records are critical tools law enforcement can use to solve crimes involving guns and identify gun sellers and purchasers who evade the law. “When I first started, I was the lowest salary in the whole tracing center, as a contractor,” he tells me. At first I think he's got allergies or something-he is not a person you imagine crying. He tells these stories in detail, explaining why he searched one place, rather than another, and how critical these choices were, and how he agonized over them, and somewhere in the middle of the stories, his eyes well up. He tells me about an 8-year-old girl who got killed, and a college girl who got raped, and in both cases the gun trace Urrutia did solved the crime. Urrutia tells me about a 96-year-old guy who got robbed and beaten nearly to death in his own home the gun trace that Urrutia did on the stolen gun is what broke the case and how they caught the assailant. Everybody I talk to has been here years and years. He's a big guy, shy, a blocky head and a thick accent. The ATF completed it within a few hours, despite a system that, according to federal law, must remain intricate, thorny, and all but impenetrable.īack in the cubicles, I sit with an ATF specialist named Daniel Urrutia. It was a trace just like any other trace that happens here in Martinsburg. Remember: We didn't know too much about radicalized homegrown jihadists until then. The FBI picked up Marquez, who is alleged to have been plotting attacks with Farook at Riverside City College and on state highway 91 as early as 2011. Turned out a former neighbor, Enrique Marquez, bought those during the same time period. But what about the assault rifles-they were still a mystery.
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Farook and Malik were discovered to have posted an oath of allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook just before the attack began. Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, had purchased the handguns legally between three and eight years previously at Annie's Get Your Gun, an FFL in Corona, California.
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At the National Tracing Center, they figured out where the guns came from, as well as who bought them-the slain assailants. After a shoot-out, the cops recovered a Smith & Wesson handgun, a Llama handgun, a Smith & Wesson M&P assault rifle, and a DPMS Panther Arms assault rifle. Remember: Nobody knew who these maniacs were or why they were doing this. Last December two gunmen opened fire at a holiday office party in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people.