'Insanity': It now takes an average of two weeks for ATF agents to perform gun traces — here's why

On Friday, NBC News reported that federal agents now need at least two weeks to do a simple gun trace — as the growing requests for help from cities around the country conflict with an 80s-era law that sharply limits how the nation's top gun agency can do its job.

"Inside a windowless office in a nondescript brick building, a lone man is staring at three computer screens while typing out lines of code," reported Simone Weichselbaum, Andrew Blankstein, Yasmine Salam. and Frank Thorp V. "He’s among a group of developers and coders who aid federal agents responsible for tracking down the owners of guns used in crimes across the United States. But these computer experts use their talents not to modernize the gun shop records that pour into this facility, the National Tracing Center operated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. They are in fact doing the opposite: converting the digital files into screenshots akin to paper records so they cannot be searched electronically."

"Federal agents can run scans on things such as license plates and fingerprints to instantly find out who they belong to. But when it comes to guns, they’re essentially handcuffed by a 1986 law that keeps the ATF stuck in the past," the report noted. "The nearly 40-year-old regulations prevent the agency from keeping searchable, digitized gun transaction records." Democrats in Congress have proposed bills to update the regulation, but Republicans have blocked the law, claiming this would effectively be a national gun registry.

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Earlier this year, Congress passed the first major bipartisan bill on guns in 30 years — although this bill did not do anything to modernize the ATF.

As a consequence of this legal limitation, the report noted, ATF agents now need 12 to 14 days to do a simple gun trace to check who sold a weapon used in a shooting or robbery. Former ATF deputy director Edgar Domenech told NBC, “It’s just insanity to think this is how we’re operating.”

Congress has in general been divided over ATF policy. Earlier this year, the Senate narrowly confirmed Steve Dettelbach to head the agency — only the second person to be confirmed as a permanent director for the ATF in 16 years.