Titus, Pascrell Lead Colleagues Seeking to End Deadly Crime Gun Tracing Backlog

36-year-old prohibition protected by NRA blocks ATF from easily searching for weapons used in crimes, leading to long delays for local law enforcement

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Reps. Dina Titus (D-NV-01) and Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today led 23 House members highlighting the devastating backlog in tracing guns used in crimes. Under an archaic law protected at the behest of the NRA, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) is blocked from electronically searching for the records of crime guns, impeding local law enforcement agencies across the country.

“We write to express concerns regarding the increasingly long periods of time it is taking to process crime gun tracing requests from state and local law enforcement agencies. This has been a consistent problem within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives National Tracing Center and we are concerned about law enforcement’s ability to conduct thorough and timely investigations given increased delays at the federal level,” the members write new ATF Director Steve Dettelbach.

After a firearm associated with a crime is discovered somewhere in the United States, federal, state, or local law enforcement officials contact the ATF, which then must re-create the chain of custody of the firearm. Yet for decades the ATF has been blocked from digitizing millions of gun sales records already in the ATF’s possession so they can be searched by computers at its National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, West Virginia, the only federal facility that maintains gun sales records in the U.S.  This outdated restriction requires sifting through the ATF’s mountains of paper records, a laborious process that delays investigations and drains law enforcement resources.

The ATF’s inability to maintain a modern, digital system has had significant consequences on law enforcement’s ability to conduct investigations and we are concerned about these delays given increased volume in tracing requests. In the 2020 fiscal year, NTC received 490,000 trace requests from law enforcement agencies, representing a 43.1 percent increase in total requests over the last decade. Reports from 2021 indicated that the demand on NTC is accelerating, as the facility was slated to receive 540,000 trace requests in that year alone. Just last month, we learned that NTC now requires approximately two weeks to conduct a routine gun trace, except under special circumstances.

Rep. Pascrell is lead sponsor of the Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act, legislation which would provide a simple, narrow change in the law to allow the ATF to electronically search crime gun sales records already in its possession. The law would neither expand the universe of records the ATF is permitted to access, nor allow the ATF to search for information it already has access to. Importantly, the legislation will allow ATF searches for criminal and national security investigations only and for no other purpose. He most recently reintroduced the legislation in May 2021 along with Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT).

The letter to ATF head Dettelbach is signed by Reps. Titus, Pascrell, Adraino Espaillat (D-NY-13), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Dwight Evans (D-PA-03), Scott Peters (D-CA-52), Dean Phillips (D-MN-03), Don Beyer (D-VA-08), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ-12), Katie Porter (D-CA-45), Bobby Rush (D-IL-01), Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA-40), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX-18), Hank Johnson (D-GA-04), Barbara Lee (D-CA-13), Andre Carson (D-IN-07), Donald Payne, Jr. (D-NJ-10), Lou Correa (D-CA-46), Mike Quigley (D-IL-05), Andy Kim (D-NJ-03), David Price (D-NC-04), Jake Auchincloss (D-MA-04), and Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA-11).

The text of the members’ letter is below.

October 17, 2022

The Honorable Steve Dettelbach

Director

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives

99 New York Avenue, N.E.

Washington, D.C. 20226

Dear Director Dettelbach,

We write to express concerns regarding the increasingly long periods of time it is taking to process crime gun tracing requests from state and local law enforcement agencies. This has been a consistent problem within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) National Tracing Center (NTC) and we are concerned about law enforcement’s ability to conduct thorough and timely investigations given increased delays at the federal level.

As you well know, the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 prevents the ATF from maintaining a fully searchable and centralized gun transaction database. At the behest of the gun lobby, conservatives in Congress have repeatedly used appropriations riders to further restrict the ATF’s ability to trace firearms.^[1] As a result, the process by which a single firearm used in a crime is traced must be conducted page-by-page at the NTC in West Virginia.

At the facility, employees respond to roughly 1,700 tracing requests daily from law enforcement across the U.S. This process includes contacting the gun manufacturer, each wholesale and retail dealer, and each federal firearms licensee (FFL) in the distribution chain who must then scour their own records to identify the next individual in the chain of custody for the firearm. If any entity in the chain of custody has gone out of business, this process is much more onerous and time-consuming for NTC. Before even beginning the process of sifting through dated FFL records to track crime guns, NTC employees must scan thousands of files from dealers who have shuttered their doors. Having to manually examine thousands of scanned paper documents limits the ATF’s ability to extract tracing information from a single, fully operational source.

The ATF’s inability to maintain a modern, digital system has had significant consequences on law enforcement’s ability to conduct investigations and we are concerned about these delays given increased volume in tracing requests. In the 2020 fiscal year, NTC received 490,000 trace requests from law enforcement agencies, representing a 43.1 percent increase in total requests over the last decade.^[2] Reports from 2021 indicated that the demand on NTC is accelerating, as the facility was slated to receive 540,000 trace requests in that year alone.^[3] Just last month, we learned that NTC now requires approximately two weeks to conduct a routine gun trace, except under special circumstances.^[4]

In the near-term, it is incredibly unlikely that congressional Republicans will come to the negotiating table to clarify the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act or remove the appropriations riders that limit the ATF’s ability to modernize its gun tracing system for criminal investigation purposes. Moreover, our straightforward legislation to modernize NTC tracing, the Crime Gun Modernization Act, has received no support from Republicans in the House or Senate, much less hard commitments for support from members to ensure passage.^[5] While recognizing the existing statutory limitations hindering the ATF’s ability to trace crime guns, the current status quo is clearly unsustainable and significantly impedes law enforcement’s ability to catch criminals in a timely fashion.

Accordingly, we ask that you provide answers to the following questions regarding the ATF’s tracing backlog and the amount of time it takes the agency to assist state and local law enforcement in carrying out criminal investigations:

1. What is the status of the crime gun tracing backlog at the National Tracing Center?
2. What is the ATF currently doing to mitigate this backlog and reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a gun tracing request?
3. How does the ATF choose to expedite a tracing request for certain criminal investigations?
4. How much additional time and resources could be saved if the ATF could maintain a centralized digital database on firearm transactions?
5. Beyond legislation to allow the ATF to maintain a database, what dedicated funding is needed to correct this issue in the immediate future?

As Members of Congress, it is our priority to prevent gun violence and assist state and local law enforcement in doing so. Thank you for your ongoing work in the interests of public safety and we look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

###

[1] https://giffords.org/lawcenter/report/atf-captured-by-the-gun-lobby/#footnote_20_55245

[2] “Fiscal Year 2022 Congressional Budget Submission: Salaries and Expenses,” Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, May 2021.

[3] https://www.nbcchicago.com/violence-in-chicago/how-crime-guns-are-traced-in-the-us-one-page-at-a-time/2615068/

[4] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2-weeks-perform-routine-gun-trace-rcna39606

[5] https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3536