Mr. HUGHES. Does the administration feel that the tracing aspects of the 1968 gun control law has any useful and beneficial effect in both the prevention and the solution of offenses in this country?

Mr. GAINER. Clearly, it has a beneficial effect.

Mr. HUGHES. Then why in the world are we not talking about trying to make the tracing law, as it presently exists, a little more effective? Right now we keep a record of the manufacturer, the sale to the wholesaler, to the retailer, to the first purchaser, and it stops right there.

Mr. GAINER. It began in 1968 and it covers only new weapons, so it is limited. But given the rate of sale of new weapons, it covers a whale of a lot. Given the temporal relationship between gun purchase and handgun use, it covers a higher percentage, even, of handguns that are used in crime. It is of value, there is no doubt about it. You are talking about something of considerable value.

Mr. HUGHES. Would it not be of more value if in fact we did two things with the tracing law, two very simple things. First of all, centralize that information, presently and I see as a matter of policy you are indicating there will be no centralization. Why are we not putting it on computer first of all so that the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms section will have it readily available? It will bring us into the 20th century.

And second of all, extend it to the second and the third purchasers and the other transferees. Would that not be of immeasurable benefit to law enforcement in this country?

Mr. GAINER. There is no doubt that it would be of benefit.

Mr. HUGHES. Why is the administration not supporting that? It is very simple.

Mr. GAINER. Registration, peculiarly enough, is one of the more emotion-arousing issues in the area of gun control.

Mr. HUGHES. So are homicides very emotional and assassination attempts and a lot of other things that are very emotional.

Mr. GAINER. Mr. Hughes, I agree with you. I am simply trying to provide an answer to the query.

The general concern of those who oppose any handgun controls is that through a central registry available to the Federal Government, a Machiavellian administration may undertake some midnight raid, using the Army 10 years hence, confiscating all weapons held by householders in the country. Now however much you might discount that possibility, however much I might discount it, this is something that some people honestly believe. Since registration does not have a direct, but does have a collateral preventive aspect, it was not seen as that important as a preventive measure when weighed against that concern.

There is no doubt that registration records are very valuable in tracing weapons. Under the de facto registration system that exists today. a noncentralized system, the ATF people can trace weapons quite readily. As I recall, the weapon used to shoot Governor Wallace was traced in about 10 minutes. That used to kill Dr. King was traced in about 20 or 30 minutes. They can do quite well, but vou are right. the system is limited to those new weapons sold since 1968. There are a variety of additional approaches one can take in that area. There could be a central registration.

There could be a central registration available to the Government only on an individual inquiry basis. There could be a transfer notice system that would not be a direct registration scheme, but would require individuals wishing to sell their handguns to do so at dealers' offices, with the dealers filling out the same Federal forms as they do today when they sell a handgun. That latter approach would create a de facto source of registration information over a period of a generation anyway, without causing the concerns that have been prompted by a central registration system. There are a variety of approaches that can be used to achieve the same result.

Mr. HUGHES. Well, aside from the emotional aspect of it, what other objection does the administration have to extending the 1968 gun control tracing aspects?

Mr. GAINER. Are you talking about computerizing the information?

Mr. HUGHES. I am talking about two things; computerizing it so that ATF does not have to go to each one of the stages, the manufacturer, then to the wholesealer, then to the retailer, which consumes time.

Mr. GAINER. That can be done as a matter of law probably. However, as ATF interprets it, there is a very strong indication that it was not the congressional intent in passing the 1968 legislation to allow for general access to the dealers' records of sales to individuals. Therefore, ATF is quite loath to propose computerization of this aspect of records without an indication by Congress that this was not intended to be proscribed.

Mr. HUGHES. I think it was Congress intent, at least I hope it was. that they would make the law effective. And I just cannot imagine. with all of the computers we have around this town, that somebody in the administration did not think a long time ago that perhaps it might be a big help.

Mr. GAINER. ATF has thought about it.

Mr. HUGHES. Well, that is good. We are moving in the right direction anyway.

And the second thing is: We have presently a tracing law, so we are away from, hopefully, the emotional aspects. We already have a tracing law that is totally ineffective. Now, we should be doing one of two things. We should either be scrapping what we have or we should making it effective, one or the other. We should either be extending the law so that we require any transfers in the future, any subsequent sales from the second to the third purchaser, or we should do away with the tracing. It just does not make sense to me to have half a loaf.

Mr. GAINER. Well, in the ideal world. I suppose a full loaf might be better than half. We have half a loaf today. It is better than nothing. It is partially effective. I would not agree that it is totally ineffective. We can trace many weapons that are used in the course of crimes. I think one key reason why this approach has not engendered the same sort of emotional response as more direct registration schemes is because it is decentralized. The Federal Government does not have routine, monetal access to all dealers' records; it has to go out with an individual weapon and say: "Who bought this?" Also, it is a de facto scheme that

does not, on its surface, raise the concerns of those who are concerned about registration per se.

Mr. HUGHES. Well, I suppose there are very few issues that we are confronted with today that do not invoke some emotion. I would suggest to the administration that even though there is some emotion that the greater proportion of the pepole, I believe, at least in my district which is a very rural district, it has a lot of hunters, a lot of people that are involved in target shooting, that have a legitimate interest at stake, by and large the people feel we have to have some form of additional gun control.

Mr. GAINER. We found that, too. We found that the hunters and the target shooters, by and large-those that we talked to as individuals rather than as organizations generally do favor some sort of approach that would reduce the incidence of handgun violence.

Mr. HUGHES. Let me ask you on a related subject. I see where even though we have a 14-day waiting period in the administration's bill, there is no requirement that the local police run an FBI check. Have you compiled any data that would indicate what kind of uniform reporting we have, even within the counties or within the States? Mr. GAINER. There is no uniformity.

Mr. HUGHES. Then why are we not first of all requiring that there be an FBI check? Why is it that we hesitate to really make the 14day waiting period realistic?

Mr. GAINER. I think it is realistic, Mr. Hughes. What we are talking about is an inquiry by local police. There were 120 police officers killed last year, over 70 percent of them were killed with handguns. The local police we have found are as interested as any other one group in this country in having effective handgun laws. They are the ones who are getting shot with them.

Mr. HUGHES. I agree, but the fact of the matter remains that even within counties one municipality does not know who the felons are of another county.

Mr. GAINER. That is the reason for the FBI name check.

Mr. HUGHES. Well, there is no requirement that there be an FBI check, apparently.

Mr. GAINER. Again, Mr. Hughes, it would seem that if an individual says he lives in a community, if the police chief finds he does live in the community and if the individual is reported to the police chief as being an individual who is seeking to purchase a handgun, that police chief has an incentive simply to write or cable the FBI for a name check and have the information sent to him within a 4- or 5-day period to see if it indicates that the individual has a criminal record any place in the country.

Mr. HUGHES. Why not require that?

Mr. GAINER. It could be required.

Mr. HUGHES. Why not do it? It does not make sense. If we know there is no uniform reporting and you are going to have a 14-day waiting period, why not require them to utilitze the tools we have at our disposal to make sure they do not have a criminal record or a felony record?

Mr. GAINER. Mr. Hughes, if you can find a constitutional way for the Federal Government to force the individual police departments

scattered throughout the country to do something, we can indeed. I am not saying it cannot be done. I am saying that this was not further explored after initially devising two different approaches because it seemed that as a practical matter the local police are those with the primary interest in assuring that there is indeed an FBI name check concerning every applicant that lives within their jurisdiction. Mr. HUGHES. Are we not going to license the dealers?

Mr. GAINER. Yes, indeed; they are licensed now.

Mr. HUGHES. Does that not give us the kind of handle on it that we would need?

Mr. GAINER. We can and would require the dealers to ask the police to check their records. I do not think however, that the dealer's license would give a sufficiently direct handle to go from the dealers to the local governmental authorities.

Mr. HUGHES. Well, I think it would. In the Constitution I cannot see any problems. I cannot imagine why the administration would find any problems with it. If we have a constitutional right to license. we certainly have a constitutional right to require them to make a legitimate check, a realistic check.

Mr. GAINER. But we are not licensing police authorities, of course. Mr. HUGHES. No one said we are licensing them. We are going to be licensing the people who are trafficking in weapons.

Mr. GAINER. My own feeling is that a constitutional means probably can be devised to do that. I do not know. We have not carefully explored that area simply because it did not seem to be a requisite to effective control, given the material inducement that local police have to obtain an FBI name check.

Mr. HUGHES. One additional question, Mr. Chairman.

You indicate in your testimony that the 14-day waiting period would induce us to exclude felons and others that should not be receiving weapons. What falls under that other category besides felons? You are talking about those, say misdemeanants?

Mr. GAINER. No, not misdemeanants. Those who have a history of mental aberration, who have been institutionalized, and who have not had that disability removed under Treasury regulations; minors; users of certain drugs-the same list that exists in the existing statute. Mr. HUGHES. How about people who are convicted of possessing a weapon in the States and through plea bargaining instead of becoming a felony or a high misdemeanor, becomes a misdemeanor, would they be included?

Mr. GAINER. They would not be.

Mr. HUGHES. Well, that just seems incredible to me.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Ashbrook?

Mr. ASHBROOK. Yes, I would like to ask a couple of additional questions. I know we have other witnesses. But let me just say for the reeord that having listened to your response to my friend and colleague from New Jersey, I want to correct one statement you made about us featuring administrations doing all of these things. From what you have indicated, this administration, your department, is well on the way to doing them right now.

I call your attention to your statement and some of the things you said. You gave a clear indication you are doing the very best you can

to register through the back door and avoid emotional issues. You even went so far as to say that under the de facto registration of weapons we have today, we can trace, and you went on from there. Would you explain the de facto registration of weapons we have today?

Mr. GAINER. The 1968 act required dealers to keep records of all sales of firearms to individuals. The manufacturers and distributors also must keep records. Those records must be made available to the Department of the Treasury upon Treasury's request. When a Treasury agent finds a weapon that he suspects has been used in the course of a crime, he can report that to ATF. ATF can then ask the maker of that weapon, describing it by model and by serial number. what dealer that weapon was sent to. The dealer can then be contacted-by telephone if necessary. He can be asked to whom he sold that weapon. The dealer shuffles through his card file and indicates the individual to whom he had sold that weapon.

It can therefore be traced. It is an effective tracing tool. It has been utilized and it has been very useful in solving many offenses.

Mr. ASHBROOK. All right. Then if in H.R. 9022 we could just extend that to the transfer, as against the sale, which is implicit in your bill, then little by little, by the process of attrition we would have done by the back door, what you say you did not want to do by the front door, you literally would have registered every firearm, sooner or later, in this country.

Mr. GAINER. This bill does not require the keeping of records of a private transfer.

Mr. ASHBROOK. It certainly gives the authority to the Secretary to approve in your section K, the sale or transfer of any handgun model, et cetera. I think there is the implicit power there. It is astounding to me in listening to your response to Mr. Hughes-Mr. Hughes obviously has a different point of view than I do and that is his right and I certainly respect it--but you clearly give the implication you are doing the very, very best you can to get at registration through the back door. Mr. GAINER. We are doing the very best we can to enforce the existing laws and to reduce the incidence of handgun violence to the extent we can. This is our duty. The Department of Justice is materially interested in the problems of handguns because handguns are the guns that are used in crime. We have a direct interest, and we are in fact doing our best to stem that problem.

Mr. ASHBROOK. And you directly state that except for the emotionalism in this country, you would probably be doing more. Is that not correct?

Mr. GAINER. If the Congress provided the tools to do more, of course the Department would be enforcing the laws that the Congress passes. Mr. ASHBROOK. I will repeat what I said. I do not think our fears are directed at some future administration. I kind of have a few concerns about the direction we heard in the testimony today.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONYERS. Well, nothing more clearly illustrates the fallacy of the Federal legislative process than that observation. If the Congress gave you the tools to do more and you are here testifying on an administration bill written and drafted outside of Congress, with everybody but Congress involved in it, and now you are suggesting to us that we