Posts
Most every news site was reporting that a gun registered to Darrin Campbell was found at the scene.
Investigators also said all four family members had been shot and that they had recovered a gun in the home registered in the name of Darrin Campbell, who had been renting the home with his wife and two teenage children.
This is interesting because Florida doesn't have gun registration.
The time from the fire to announcing it was his gun seems entirely too short for an ATF trace to have occurred.
It makes me wonder if Hillsborough County has a back-door registration scheme in place, their sheriff is no friend to gun owners. I don't know who one would contact to find out what was meant by "registered to".
Dunno. If it's just a straight "mfr-distributor-Type 01-initial buyer" trace and all the steps are competent and have someone in charge of bookkeeping/compliance who's not at lunch when the phone call comes in, a trace won't take an afternoon. I could get the information for the BATFEIEIO without even having to put them on hold, usually.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's a stupid reporter thing. What they mean is "traced to" when they said "registered to".
Delete"Perhaps it's a stupid reporter thing."
DeleteOf course it is. Plus, most people are not gun nuts and/or in the gun business and therefore have no clue how this stuff works.
For instance, registration of firearms is actually black-letter-law illegal in TN. People would move to the state from some Yankee hell hole or another, come into the gun store, and ask how to go about "registering their guns" often enough that I had a pat speech:
"(Sir/Ma'am) there is no provision for registering firearms in the state of Tennessee You couldn't if you tried. As a matter of fact, it is specifically illegal."
I got pulled over one time, and the small town cop asked about my M296 "Ma'am, is this gun registered to you?" and I started to launch into my spiel, only to have him bow up and say "Don't you tell me what is or isn't legal! If you bought this gun in Tennessee, you'd better have registered it in your name! Did you fill out a yellow piece of paper when you bought it?"
And I started to bow up back, about to explain to him how he was ten different kinds of wrong, tell him how a 4473 worked, explain to him that for the last fifteen years the BATFEIEIO had mailed me a copy of all the federal and state laws pertaining to firearms and that it was my job to know these things...
And then I just bit my tongue and said "Yes, sir, then it's registered in my name," because I had better things to do that afternoon.
I don't think he was trying to be a dick. I'm sure he honestly believed what he said and thought I was trying to be some kinda jailhouse lawyer. I talked to the one of the prosecutors in his county later and asked if he could maybe get the guy gently straightened out on that.
(And these days it's almost certainly computerized at the mfr and distributor levels. I still had to thumb through paper logbooks and then find a 4473 in a filing cabinet.)
ReplyDeleteThe initial, paranoid, thought is, "since the ATF is forbidden to make a computerized registration system; we'll have the manufacturers, distributors and dealers do it for us!"
DeleteThe 4473 as defacto registration has been there a long time, hasn't it? The only out being they have no idea if the initial buyer sold the gun or if they've changed addresses.
Not really. I have a file box full of 4473's from day one. The ATF has called me a couple of times and a agent came by once. He just took a few notes and left. Other than that, the info stays here and no one ever sees it. Now, if I go out of business, I'm supposed to send all the 4473's and my bound books to Atlanta. What they do with them there is anybodies guess. And also, if the original buyer sells the gun, it's virtually untraceable.
DeleteYou're the unpaid archivist of the purchase record. If the person who bought the gun still has it and still lives in the same place it's a registration. If If If.
DeleteIt didn't used to worry me as I didn't tend to keep guns, was a gun renter from Jacobson's in Story City. Now that a few have stuck I worry that some small out of business' records are being compiled into a list of things I might own and be used as justification for some sort of hazardous to my dog's health visit.
Not that the need to be so convoluted. The C&R license lets them call me up and ask to come over.