What are you going to do this week to support expanded background checks?

[petronius]

186. If you say pharmacy rather than convenience store, it would be arguable

Licensed firearms dealers are required to keep a bound record of every gun they bring in, and every gun that goes out. This data is kept indefinitely, and handed over to ATF when the dealer goes out of business.

Sales Records: FFLs are required to maintain records of the acquisition and sale of firearms indefinitely. The dealer must record, “in bound form,” the purchase or other acquisition of a firearm not later than the close of the next business day following the purchase or acquisition. The dealer must similarly record the sale or other disposition of a firearm not later than seven days following the date of such transaction and retain Form 4473, the Firearms Transaction Record. When a firearms business is discontinued, these records are delivered to the successor or, if none exists, to the Attorney General

http://smartgunlaws.org/retention-of-sales-background-check-records-policy-summary/

ATF does conduct inspections to ensure compliance with this requirement, and can revoke licenses if necessary. However, ATF can only inspect each dealer once a year, and doesn't have the ability to do them all - most dealers will be inspected maybe every 5 years. And ATF does find that non-trivial numbers of firearms drop out of inventory. (This, IMO, is another area where more funding and more thorough enforcement of existing law would be a good thing.)

http://www.atf.gov/publications/factsheets/factsheet-ffl-compliance.html

The inventory issue I think you're referring to is that, while FFLs are required to keep those bound records and are subject to inspection, ATF can not require FFLs to conduct an annual physical inventory to detect missing firearms. This is one of the Tiahrt Amendments (MAIG links to the 2010 text, the inventory prohibition is at the bottom of the big yellow chunk). So without an actual inspection, it's made more difficult to detect firearms missing from dealer inventory.

FWIW, I don't understand the reason to not require dealers to do an annual inventory and note any absences - it sort of seems that most normal businesses would be doing that anyway...