First, I guess, you would have to look at the defination of "missing" or "lost". Does this also included items stolen? How about items ordered but never delivered or delivered but came up short? Are break in's held against you. There are lots of ways to play the game, and the governement can stack the deck against you by its defination of terms.
It is actually pretty straight forward. As I said earlier, there is a bound book, which is just a record of what comes in to the store and what goes out. Anything logged into the bound book should either be logged out or in the store.
I'll run through your list:
Items Stolen: One way to log something out is to fill out "Inventory Theft/Loss" paperwork. If for some reason you check you inventory and you can't find a gun, or there is a break in and items are stolen, you fill out paperwork that says so. You also notify the local police and the ATF. Then you can "log the guns out" and when the ATF comes to check your inventory they see that those guns should not be in the store. You have committed no infraction, because you can account for every gun in the books and every gun in the store.
Items Ordered but never delivered: If they aren't delivered, they don't go in the bound book. The gun does not get logged in until it arrives and the dealer checks the serial number. If it isn't delivered, then the gun is neither in the bound book or the store. Again, this is the way it should be . . .guns in the book match up with guns in the store.
A very innocent example of how the book might not match the inventory:
I sell a Glock, and a customer fills out the 4473 and passes the NICS check. I sign the 4473 and give the customer his gun. But I forget to log out the sale in the bound book. When the ATF comes to inspect me, they ask to see the Glock in my bound book, but it is no longer here, because I sold it. That is a "missing" gun, because as of now I can't account for it. If I would have done regular inventory inspections this would have been avoided, because I would have found the problem before the ATF.
The way I see it, there are 4 possibilities:
1) The store in question has over 400 problems with their record keeping, and dilligent searching of their 4473s will show that they actually can account for all of the "missing" guns.
2) The store in question actually lost over 400 guns and has no idea where they are.
3) Some combination of 1 and 2. This is what I'd bet on. With several people working and a lot of gun transactions, there is a high possibility that there are a lot of paperwork errors and that a couple guns walked out in someone's pocket.
4) The ATF is trying to shut down a store and is planting evidence and falsifying records.
Has the ATF done this in the past? I believe they have. I believe they will do so in the future. I also believe, based on the information contained in the article, that in this case they probably went by the books, gave the guy several warnings, and he refused to do anything to change the way he ran his business.
But on Thursday, U.S. District Judge William M. Nickerson ruled that while Abrams "may challenge the numerousness or seriousness of its violations of federal firearms law, [he] makes no credible argument that there were no violations."
"The undisputed fact is that because of [Valley Gun's] lapses, scores of firearms are unaccounted for, and therefore, untraceable," the judge ruled.
You can bet that if the store owner felt the ATF was out to get him, he would have mentioned it. The owner admits that most of the mistakes are human error.
