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

[petronius]

191. I don't think that's the case actually - as dirty as the GOP and NRA may be

there isn't any real reason for them to sit around and come up with ways to protect criminal gun dealers. There isn't really a benefit there to the NRA, and when the GOP sets out to facilitate crime they do it at the Wall Street megabucks level. Illegal sales are perhaps lucrative to a small number of corrupt dealers, but they're not a financial driver in the industry overall.

Rather, I think the objections to inventory and record keeping in general stem firstly from a dislike of anything that might possibly help lead to registration. I think that's why the bound books and other forms that dealers are required to keep (and to turn over to ATF after retirement) are deliberately kept in so archaic a form - when ATF wants to trace a gun they literally have to page through the boxes and books. And that's why the NICS data has to be purged at the federal end within 24 hours (IIRC) of the check.

Secondly, I suspect it has to do with lawsuit protection. The industry would not be keen on any sort of systematic data collection that might support suits against dealers and manufacturers of firearms that ended up in criminal hands.

So protecting illegal sales isn't the point, but if these restrictions make it harder for ATF to identify corrupt dealers, I don't think the NRA or the GOP much cares.