Car Knocker
Member
From the January, 2007, FFL Newsletter received today:
That's a lot of inventory shrinkage!
17,148 guns reported missing in 2005
- Thread starter Car Knocker
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Umm...that averages to almost 36 per FFL. If the 312 that reported less than 10 guns lost, can't find an average of 8 apiece 
, the remaining bunch lost over 108 guns each!!! 
How do you lose 2 guns per week, all year long?
, the remaining bunch lost over 108 guns each!!! How do you lose 2 guns per week, all year long?
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MikeB
Member
Not really. Considering there were approx 4.7 million new guns manufactured or imported for sale during 2005, I don't think 18,000 missing in a single year are really all that many. Numbers can be fairly meaningless without context. I'm actually surprised the number isn't higher. After all, we are dealing with humans and computers to track all those guns, and neither are infallible.
The Deer Hunter
Member
Now are they just guns which the sellers lost the 4473's to or forgot to do paperwork for? Or just lost or stolen guns?
Because if thats a real high number.
BTW, Welcome to The High Road GotGuns
Because if thats a real high number.
BTW, Welcome to The High Road GotGuns
Car Knocker
Member
Well, since the FFLs reported them as missing after getting the paperwork sorted out, I'd venture to guess they were missing/stolen.
Kali Endgame
member
Well, I'm going to do my part and try to find them. Yippee, a gunny Easter egg hunt.
Of course 17,148 lost guns is a high number. The 4.7 million number is not really relevant to the perfectly valid context of: all guns lost in a year (by all the losers). In this case the 477 FFLs cited as losing guns are a huge problem since their performance indicates incompetence, lack of caring or both.
I wouldn't have thought the BATF would put up with such nonsense. I thought it was tough about those kinds of things. If the number of guns by FFLs is really 17,148 in one year, it is a serious problem. *** happened to them?
WeedWhacker
Member
Not to forget: the whole system of recording the sale of new firearms is just another abridgement of inherent, God-given rights. We do not (yet) blame the knives used by slasher-killers and require merchants to collect a ton of information about each pocketknife sold.
Four tenths of one percent margin of error? I'd say that's pretty damned good for humans. Sure beats the IRS' and BATFE's record-keeping accuracy by a few powers of ten.
Blame the criminal, not the tool.
Four tenths of one percent margin of error? I'd say that's pretty damned good for humans. Sure beats the IRS' and BATFE's record-keeping accuracy by a few powers of ten.
Blame the criminal, not the tool.
WeedWhacker
Member
FCFC said:
Equality under the law.
When the BATFE and IRS can't keep their own crap in line, then expect nothing short of perfection of the peasants, I call foul. For just one out of hundreds (if not thousands) of such incidents, read up on the attempted railroading Red's Trading Post.
Frankly, I don't care where 18,000 firearms went. They are not going to do anything bad by themselves. The criminals which may misuse them should be locked up in prison, not out on parole because there is no room to keep them behind bars due to, among other things, mandatory minimum sentences for people who like to consume Evil Drugs as opposed to Approved Drugs (nicotine, alcohol, caffeine, etc.).
wally
Member
What happened to them? They were stolen!
I see some blame the victim mentality here. Theft of a gun from an FFL is a Federal Felony, where is the FBI/BATFE effort to solve these crimes? Same place it is on Idenity Theft -- talk to us when your *losses* exceed $100,000!
--wally.
Edit: FCFC, new member, I smell a troll.
elrod
Member
You almost have to believe in a combination of thiefts, careless paperwork, and illegal sales to account for the missing guns. Locally, I know of one dealer closed down for missing inventory. According to local LEO sources, there was even some class III stuff gone!!
MinnMooney
Member
Time for a little math.
If 135 FFL's lost 10 or more then the other 342 FFL's lost 9 or fewer. Let's just put that figure at 9 each so that's 3078. That leaves 14,070 for the 135 very sloppy/careless FFL's OR about 104 guns (IN ONE YEAR!). I don't care what kind of businessman you are......... THAT'S SLOPPY!!!
Someone said, "What happened to them? They were stolen!
I see some blame the victim mentality here." So what?! He'd still have them on inventory and would have reported them as "Stolen" so they are not a "discrepancy". They are just lousy business people.
If Target has a "discrepancy" of 108 barbies at the end of the year, it's written off to employee theft, shoplifting or whatever..... but they're not regulated by the BATF. When they deal in guns under the rules of a license then that license can be witheld or revoked. Same goes for a bar or liquor store.
No one is "Blaming the victim". If they're that bad at their business then get a different business........... sell Barbies.
If 135 FFL's lost 10 or more then the other 342 FFL's lost 9 or fewer. Let's just put that figure at 9 each so that's 3078. That leaves 14,070 for the 135 very sloppy/careless FFL's OR about 104 guns (IN ONE YEAR!). I don't care what kind of businessman you are......... THAT'S SLOPPY!!!
Someone said, "What happened to them? They were stolen!
I see some blame the victim mentality here." So what?! He'd still have them on inventory and would have reported them as "Stolen" so they are not a "discrepancy". They are just lousy business people.
If Target has a "discrepancy" of 108 barbies at the end of the year, it's written off to employee theft, shoplifting or whatever..... but they're not regulated by the BATF. When they deal in guns under the rules of a license then that license can be witheld or revoked. Same goes for a bar or liquor store.
No one is "Blaming the victim". If they're that bad at their business then get a different business........... sell Barbies.
deadin
Member
All I can ask of the "apologists" that are saying "well, in the big picture it's nothing", is how many times is it "OK" for a delivery room nurse to drop a baby, or how many times would they accept a mechanics excuse that "I only screw up a repair job every once in a while. Too bad it was yours, but TS, it's within the margin of error."
MinnMooney
Member
Hey, "fcfc", is that a real AR-15 or an airsoft? My daughter might even go to the range with me if'n I dolled one up like that!
wait...that's exactly what we are talking about.
Nurses DO drop babies, doctors DO botch up procedures, and only the absolute worse ones, where doctors knowingly take shortcuts, work drunk, or whatever actually become malpractice cases...and then only if the patient learns of it.
Snip a little too far, cutting a nerve making a leg unusable, well, that's just a risk you take with any surgery.
Now, onto guns. I wonder how many of these are "I ordered 50 different guns from vendor X for my gunshop, when UPS showed up, and we received the product into inventory over the next few days, it turns out we only got 48!
I work in logistics for an electronics chain, one of the biggest 2 sources of losss before it gets on the floor (where shoplifting is the biggest source...which I don't think happens at many gunstores) is #1 we break it moving it around, #2 Vendor said they sent us 100, but the truck only had 96.
we try and catch #2 before it enters our inventory, but we don't always succeed. Sometimes people are in a hurry, and after having all their other paperwork so far that day match quantity claimed with quantity received, they just okay it quick without a careful count.
We had it for a while where we were getting rush shipped some laptops pretty much a thousand a week from oversees, so it was coming into minneapolis international airport. They would come in pallets of 100, 25 per layer standing on end, 4 layers, covered in shrinkwrap, banding, cornercards, international flight labeling, etc.
Except that frquently in the middle of the pallet we would find boxes that were opened and the merchandise pulled out.
It got so bad that we now institute a policy of every single laptop unit is restacked onto pallets we have in house, specially colored to indicate they are ours, so we can catch the empty boxes before we put them into inventory.
If an international package going through an airport where we are supposed to have 9-11 type security is being stolen, how hard is it for the UPS guy who comes and picks the guns up at the manufacturers to 'loose' a few for the right price?
ATW525
Member
As far as I'm aware FFLs are required to log in each and every firearm they receive. They don't just simply record that they've got 36 more Glock's in a shipment, they have to record each and every seriel number in their log book. I find the scenario of "Well, we only got 33 Glocks, so make up seriel numbers for the missing three" to be highly unlikely.
deadin
Member
So your basic "apologist" stance is that all of these examples are "OK"?
How many botched operations is a doctor allowed before his license is pulled?
How much inventory can be lost before it becomes unbearable?
Yes, SH, but we don't have to stand for it.
Any gunshop that "loses" and average of 40+ gun a year (regardless of the reason and only admits to it when audited) doesn't deserve to have a license.
How many botched operations is a doctor allowed before his license is pulled?
How much inventory can be lost before it becomes unbearable?
Yes, SH, but we don't have to stand for it.
Any gunshop that "loses" and average of 40+ gun a year (regardless of the reason and only admits to it when audited) doesn't deserve to have a license.
MikeB
Member
It isn't ok, but to just point out the 18,000 missing weapons, without putting it into context of just how small a number that actually is, is irresponsible and the type of reporting that the Brady Campaign would do. Those 447 FFL's should be investigated. The real story here though isn't just that we have some FFL's that may not be operating properly, but the number who are.
To look at it another way. There were over 54,000 FFL's in 2005. So that 54,000/447. So less than 8/10 of a single percent of FFL's had missing inventory.
Oops, that's 477/54000 or .00883. Still less than 9/10 of one percent.
ATW525
Member
Were all 54,000 FFLs actually audited, or were only a fraction chosen for ATF scrutiny? The snippet we've been provided with doesn't say.
wally
Member
OT, but not really true. "Innovative" lawyers like John Edwards take cases on spec to sue over normal complications from medical treatment, if they then win a few cases or get some settlements they shop around their services to anyone with this bad luck. Its how Edwards became a billionaire - as a newbie took an obstrectics case no one else at his firm would touch, won to everyone's astonishment, and now this statistically not so uncommon complication is an immediate settlement on any Doc's insurance who is unfortunate enough to have such a patient. This is why OB/GYN and Anesthesiologist fees are so high -- their insurance premiums are outrageous. Birth defects of some sort are a couple of percent of live births, general anesthesia would kill a fraction of a percent of healthy people if done to them with no other procedure.
--wally.
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