17,148 guns reported missing in 2005

[TheOld Man]

Co I work for has an auto parts warehouse. Many times discrepancies happen between what the paperwork says is on the pallet and what the warehouse guys actually unload. If they came up short 10 mufflers in a year,heads would roll. They came up short a radiator, checked what car it fit. Lifted the hood on employees Chevy, and there it was! "Good luck on your next job, if you can find one with the reference we're going to give you."

 

[FCFC]

Hey, "fcfc", is that a real AR-15 or an airsoft?

It's a real deal, MM. I snagged the pic from a random web site.

Barbie...the b*tch does have everything...

 

[WeedWhacker]

Gotcha. The old, "I don't care" criterion.

So, you concede these points:

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.

They [guns] 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.).

Or do you just enjoy taking things out of context to further your own (errant) point of view?

You do realize that the peasants *must* be armed at least as well as, if not better than, the gov't? Anything less is unconstitutional, and all these bureaucratic hoops are nothing more than illegal barriers to peasant ownership of arms.

 

[pcf]

What's a "missing" gun?

If Davidson's, a FFL holder, ships a gun through UPS and it disappears, does Davidson's have to report that gun as missing? I've shipped around 15 pistols through UPS, all overnight, and had one vanished into thin air. I can only imagine what happens when you ship 20,000 or more firearms a year.

What about FFL's that are the victims of armed robberies or burglaries?

How many gun shops in Louisiana lost their inventory to looters in 2005? Those would still be reported as missing guns.

Just because "FFL" and "missing guns" are used in the same sentence, doesn't necessarily mean the "the FFL is at fault for the missing guns."

 

[rbernie]

What about FFL's that are the victims of armed robberies or burglaries?

How many gun shops in Louisiana lost their inventory to looters in 2005? Those would still be reported as missing guns.

Just because "FFL" and "missing guns" are used in the same sentence, doesn't necessarily mean the "the FFL is at fault for the missing guns."

Stop trying to be rational - there guys were having way too much fun talking past each other and avoiding critical analysis of the quoted statistic.

 

[kellyj00]

also worth considering... if business is bad and you're shady enough, go ahead and stage a break in, hide some guns and claim they were stolen to collect insurance on your inventory.

Insurance fraud... but it's been known to happen on more than one occasion that I know of...don't know about gun shops though.

Also notable, I bought a shotgun years ago from a local shop. They wrote down the serial number wrong when they sold it to me and had to call me to verify it. It was a mossberg 500 and they had quite a few on the shelf.

 

[ATW525]

What's a "missing" gun?

If Davidson's, a FFL holder, ships a gun through UPS and it disappears, does Davidson's have to report that gun as missing? I've shipped around 15 pistols through UPS, all overnight, and had one vanished into thin air. I can only imagine what happens when you ship 20,000 or more firearms a year.

What about FFL's that are the victims of armed robberies or burglaries?

How many gun shops in Louisiana lost their inventory to looters in 2005? Those would still be reported as missing guns.

Just because "FFL" and "missing guns" are used in the same sentence, doesn't necessarily mean the "the FFL is at fault for the missing guns."

Lost or stolen firearms that have been properly reported would not be "open entries in the acquisition and disposal records". These entries are closed out with a incident number provided by the ATF when the loss is reported.

 

[Owen]

I work in the industry, and I can tell you that the large companies lose guns all the time. when you have 700,000 cluttered sf, and 600 employees, it's real easy to lose stuff.

 

[MinnMooney]

There's been a lot of good thoughts on this thread. A lot of questions have been asked and unanswered. The original article lacks a lot of facts that are needed to answer the questions. Hopefully there will be follow-up articles on the 2005 audit.

 

[FieroCDSP]

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?

No, the BATFE is just really thorough about nailing people that have no guns missing, but a line on one of the FTL's forms is written illegibly. (see Red)

We had a close call a few months back where one of our people was about to sell a firearm without paperwork. He wasn't trained to sell them, and therefore didn't know that a shotgun/muzzleloader combo is still a required NICS check. The manager caught him (fortunately) and rather than train him, they told him to call a manager if someone wants to look at one. Given this scenario, it's not hard to understand how a gun can be lost on paper.

 

[cpileri]

For statistical purposes

Lets make a generous assumption that the ATF uses solid statistics to help guide their audits.
Given a sufficiently large sample, like 54000 FFL's, you choose a certain number to audit; a representative sample.

The number you choose has a statistical significance and a confidence interval associated with it. If you choose a decent sample, you can make a statement like " I am within 5% certain that my results are representative of all FFL's, plus or minus 1%". Again, this depends on the exact numbers.

So if you choose a 100% standard, in other words a 'zero-tolerance' for error and in your representative sample you find an error; have you failed to meet standard?

You can't say for certain. The best you could say is "I am within 1% certain that my result is representative of all FFL's plus-or-minus 1%".

In order to DISPUTE the seemingly sub-standard result; you must now perform a FULL review of everyone in the population- all 54000 FFL's...

(hold that thought, since here is where the regular biological community and the ATF part ways...)

In a biologic system, it is accepted that normal human variation will produce error a certain percentage of the time. Assuming that the 100% standard is achieveable by humans at all, it is accepted that at any given time in the ENTIRE population you should find over 95% of humans 'in compliance.

So if the ATF were following an accepted human model, they would now have to check ALL FFL's and every single record, and if 95% or greater was achieved; then the population gets a pass. If a single individual was audited, they would have to check not just that year's records but all the records from the entire time that person had the liscence; and if the ffl got over 95% then the ffl get a pass.

Of course, the ATF set an arbitrary and essentially unachieveable 100% standard on full review (which i doubt they perform, BTW), not 95%. But that is more so they can keep their funding and justify their existence, than in actually doing anything else.

C-

 

[cpileri]

more

Just to clarify...

a 100% achievement on full review may be achieveable by any given individual at any given time, but not by any given individual 100% of the time; nor by all of the individuals (i.e. the population) at any given time; and certainly cannot be expected by all of the individuals all of the time.

Did that help?

C-

 

[gezzer]

These are still better percentages than the NFA records of the BATFE.

Close only to lost guns by the police agencys.

 

[pharmer]

ATF would need 10 years to audit every FFL. Most of the guns in question are "technical errors". Not logged in bound book, disposal (sale) not recorded, personal weapons (FFL's do own guns that are not required to be in BB) transferred into or out of inventory. Something nice comes in and I want it, not in book. Momma says "no more guns" so I put one of my clunkers in the display case to make her happy. I'll make the entry tomorrow when I open. I probably missed quite a few, it's been a long time since I had an FFL. Joe