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« DC City Council amends laws as Congress debates its bill | Main | House passes bill cutting back DC gun laws »

ATF has trouble with its own records

Posted by David Hardy · 17 September 2008 08:08 AM

Story here. An audit found that over a three year period the agency simply lost 75 guns and hundreds of laptops. About half of the guns were stolen, and two of these were used in crime. The rest simply vanished or are at any rate missing from inventory.

The last such audit was in 2002, and listed recommendations to cure the problems. But the latest audit, covering the five years since then, found that the rate of firearms going MIA went up by a factor of three, and the rate of laptops vanishing increased even more.

Of course the agency still expects FFLs' records to be perfect....

Reading the report itself: 5 of the stolen guns were never entered in the NCIC; all but a few dozen of the 418 missing laptops had no record of what was on them, and if sensitive data was lost (the agency did not start encryption until 2007); of the laptops that were examined in the here and now, a third were not encrypted despite the year-old policy, etc.

· BATFE

9 Comments | Leave a comment

Sevesteen | September 17, 2008 9:02 AM | Reply

Seems to me that one of the tests of "willful" should require that the error rate be greater than that of the accusing organization.

C. Cox | September 17, 2008 9:11 AM | Reply

The ATF employees with whom I have met seemed to be "nice guys," for whatever that's worth. That having been said, "When you put clowns in charge don't be surprised if a circus breaks out."

htom | September 17, 2008 10:09 AM | Reply

:facepalm:

I'm sorry, I'm sure that this is going to cause problems for lots of people, but I've been laughing for the last five minutes.

htom | September 17, 2008 10:34 AM | Reply

Wait a minute.

{"We are revising our procedures of reporting losses of weapons or laptops," Sullivan said.}

I want to suggest a new concept: revising your procedures for RETAINING weapons and laptops!

ben | September 17, 2008 11:40 AM | Reply

revising your procedures for RETAINING weapons and laptops!

If you lose something where I work, everyone gets in a line and walks the area until it's found. We call it "hands across America."

But, hey, we're just Army guys, what do we know.

ben | September 17, 2008 11:42 AM | Reply

To add to that, if that stuff isn't found, we all camp out at the troop until it is. Needless to say, people are pretty careful about tracking sensitive items properly.

The Mechanic | September 17, 2008 4:26 PM | Reply

Saw this on Outdoors http://www.outdoorsunlimited.net/
this morning also. Imagine a President Obama in charge of this crew. Doing forensic bulldozing at the scene of their crime in Waco. I'm voting McCain/Palin

sgtlmj | September 17, 2008 8:05 PM | Reply

I would think that a few well-placed FBI search warrants might shake loose some of those guns and computers.

Robert | September 17, 2008 10:15 PM | Reply

What is the difference between stolen and missing? Believe me, the FBI is never going to get involved here...can you imagine doing an inventory of the FBI evidence rooms? They have been helping themselves for decades!

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