The shooter in the Trump assassination attempt was identified within hours of the event, despite carrying no form of identification such as a driver’s license or credit card.

It’s been mentioned in the media that the rifle that was found was traced to the shooter’s father. The Washington Post has an interesting detail:

Authorities said the weapon was identified and traced using records from a gun dealership that is no longer operating.

By doing so, the ATF has revealed that they have done something they are prohibited from doing.

It took authorities only a few hours to go from the serial number on the rifle to the Form 4473 from a gun store that was no longer in business? How would they be able to search through all of the 4473s from all of the gun stores in the area, by serial number, in just a few hours? On a weekend? What even made them think to search in the local area? They didn’t know the shooter was from that area. He could have been from out of state, for all they knew.

Here’s how they knew.

When a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder goes out of business they must send their 4473s to the ATF. The ATF, and all other government agencies, are prohibited from digitizing this data.

A Federal Firearms License holder, specifically those holding the buyer/seller license, has to maintain copies of all ATF 4473 forms – that’s the one you fill out to buy or otherwise take possession of a firearm – for 20 years. If the FFL holder ceases doing business, they have to send their 4473 records to the ATF.

Not only that, the records must be hard copies. By law, they cannot be digitized. Even the ATF can’t digitize records if they receive them from a store that went out of business. They’ve actually had to dry out thousands of 4473s they’ve received after major hurricanes and other disasters. [Note: Emphasis added.]

One of those laws mentioned above is the Brady Act, which clearly says:

No department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States may—
(1) require that any record or portion thereof generated by the system established under this section be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or political subdivision thereof;

or (2) use the system established under this section to establish any system for the registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearm transactions or dispositions, except with respect to persons, prohibited by section 922 (g) or (n) of title 18, United States Code or State law, from receiving a firearm,

The Firearms Owners Protection Act also provides that:

No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established.

Seems pretty clear, huh? The ATF appropriations also similarly prohibit using any funds for that activity:

For 34 years, FY1979 through FY2012, Congress attached a proviso to the annual ATF appropriations that blocked a Carter Administration proposed rule, and any similarly proposed rule, that would have required FFLs to submit quarterly reports on firearms sales and dispositions. For FY2012, a word of futurity, “hereafter,” was included in this proviso, which indicates it too is intended to apply permanently (H.Rept. 112-284, p. 240). This proviso reads

Provided, That no funds appropriated herein or hereafter shall be available for salaries or administrative expenses in connection with
consolidating or centralizing, within the Department of Justice, the records, or any portion thereof, of acquisition and disposition of firearms maintained by federal firearms licensees

That CRS report cited above was last updated in February 2024.

Somehow, the ATF has read that clear language and decided that while they cannot create a registry, they have concluded that they are permitted to scan and digitize all of the 4473s they have received, and have a project underway to do so.

A January 2022 ATF fact sheet indicated the bureau had collected 54.7 million firearms transaction records in 2021 from FFLs who had gone out of business. Responding to a congressional inquiry, ATF later reported November 2021 holdings of nearly 921 million out-of-business records, 94% of which were computerized, as of November 2021. When ATF digitizes records, they are turned into images that cannot be detected using optical character recognition and can only be accessed for firearm tracing. Every trace requires ATF to review each FFL record and are only accessed to complete these requests. Under Final Rule 2021R-05F, record retention requires FFLs to maintain their Firearms Transaction Records (Form 4473) until they discontinue licensed activity. It allows for paper records older than 20 years to be stored at a warehouse that is subject to inspection. Alternatively, these forms can be stored electronically in an ATF-accessible, read-only format and with a minimum of one electronic access point for every 500 Forms 4473 executed over the previous year. ATF maintains that its revised record retention requirements are authorized and instrumental for firearms tracing.

emphasis added

That phrase “they are turned into images that cannot be detected using optical character recognition (OCR)” might have been true (but not really) several years ago when they created that policy, but it is not true today. You can perform exactly that operation with the Google Vision API and the cost is only $0.60/1,000 images. The ATF could OCR all of the 921 million records for a little over $550K. This is absolutely trivial. There are no technical barriers to this whatsoever. A single mediocre programmer at the ATF could set up this project in a few days.

You may be wondering, did the authorities who traced the rifle perhaps use a state level registration system to look this up? Nope, PA bans all registration.

So how did they find this so quickly without using a database they purportedly don’t have?

It’s obvious to anyone willing to look. The ATF has OCR’d those 921 million (many more by now) records and are maintaining a database that allows them to search every 4473 by serial number in a matter of seconds. There’s no other way they could have traced that rifle so quickly.