(GunReports.com) — The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has recommended that ATF impose multiple-sales-reporting requirements for long guns.
In a report issued Monday, the OIG made 15 recommendations for changes and improvements to ATF’s Project Gunrunner (PGR) initiative on the “illicit trafficking of guns from the United States to Mexico.” The long gun reporting recommendation echoes a past proposal made by the anti-gun Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) coalition in its ”Blueprint for Federal Action on Guns (2009).”
The OIG notes that ATF compliance inspections of dealers along the Southwest Border increased 133% during PGR. Last year, ATF inspected about 2,000 retailers in border states and only two licenses were revoked (0.1%). These revocations were for reasons unknown and could have had nothing to do with illicit trafficking of guns; furthermore, no dealers were charged with any criminal wrongdoing.
Larry Keane of the NSSF said, “This is not surprising, of course, since with the rarest of exceptions federal firearms dealers are law abiding businesses that are on the frontlines. These retailers aid ATF and law enforcement in preventing firearms from being obtained by criminals and are a vital source of intelligence on illegal firearms trafficking for ATF.”
Interestingly, the IOG report goes on to say that “Project Gunrunner’s investigative focus has largely remained on gun dealer inspections and straw purchaser investigations, rather than targeting higher-level traffickers and smugglers. As a result, ATF has not made full use of the intelligence, technological, and prosecutorial resources that can help ATF’s investigations reach into the higher levels of trafficking rings.”
