Legislative Handcuffs Limit A.T.F.’s Ability to Fight Gun Crime

Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

Cindy VanDyne scanning records from a gun retailer in 2010 at the A.T.F.'s National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va.

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has been without a permanent director for six years, as President Obama recently noted. But even if someone were to be confirmed for the job, the agency's ability to thwart gun violence is hamstrung by legislative restrictions and by loopholes in federal gun laws, many law enforcement officials and advocates of tighter gun regulations say.

For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions. So while detectives on television tap a serial number into a computer and instantly identify the buyer of a firearm, the reality could not be more different.

When law enforcement officers recover a gun and serial number, workers at the bureau's National Tracing Center here — a windowless warehouse-style building on a narrow road outside town — begin making their way through a series of phone calls, asking first the manufacturer, then the wholesaler and finally the dealer to search their files to identify the buyer of the firearm.

About a third of the time, the process involves digging through records sent in by companies that have closed, in many cases searching by hand through cardboard boxes filled with computer printouts, hand-scrawled index cards or even water-stained sheets of paper.

In an age when data is often available with a few keystrokes, the A.T.F. is forced to follow this manual routine because the idea of establishing a central database of gun transactions has been rejected by lawmakers in Congress, who have sided with the National Rifle Association, which argues that such a database poses a threat to the Second Amendment. In other countries, gun rights groups argue, governments have used gun registries to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens.

Advocates for increased gun regulation, however, contend that in a country plagued by gun violence, a central registry could help keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and allow law enforcement officials to act more effectively to prevent gun crime.

As has been the case for decades, the A.T.F., the federal agency charged with enforcing gun laws and regulating the gun industry, is caught in the middle.

Law enforcement officials say that in theory, the A.T.F. could take a lead role in setting a national agenda for reducing gun crime, a goal that has gained renewed urgency with the school massacre in Newtown, Conn. But it is hampered, they say, by politically driven laws that make its job harder and by the ferocity of the debate over gun regulation.

"I think that they've really been muzzled over the last several years, at least, from doing their job effectively," said Frederick H. Bealefeld III, a former police commissioner in Baltimore. "They've really kind of been the whipping agency, caught in the political turmoil of Washington on the gun issue."

The bureau's struggles are epitomized by its lack of a full-time director since Congress, prodded by the N.R.A., decided that the position should require Senate confirmation. That leadership vacuum, Mr. Bealefeld and others said, has inevitably depleted morale and kept the agency from developing a coherent agenda.

At a news conference last Wednesday, Mr. Obama called on the Senate to confirm a permanent director, saying lawmakers should "make this a priority early in the year." But given the complicated politics, it may be difficult for the White House to get a director confirmed. Mr. Obama's Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, was unable to do so.

In 2010, Mr. Obama nominated Andrew Traver, who is now the head of the bureau's Denver division, for the post. But Mr. Traver, whose candidacy is opposed by the N.R.A., has yet to have a hearing, and his nomination has languished in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The senior Republican on the panel, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, has raised questions about Mr. Traver's nomination, and his prospects for confirmation looked so dim that the White House told Democrats on the committee to make nominations for other posts a higher priority, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

Erica Goode reported from Martinsburg, and Sheryl Gay Stolberg from Washington. Michael S. Schmidt contributed reporting from Washington.

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