When there's a mass shooting like
the one that we've seen in Texas,
the ATF gets involved.
They trace the guns used in the
crime because they want to know
where those weapons came from.
Tonight, our Dustin Grove got a behind
the scenes look at how the Feds are
working with local law enforcement
to get the bad guys off the streets.
And with so many shootings
happening across the country,
they have never been busier.
But you may be surprised to find out
how the ATF is still tracing these
guns and the challenges they're facing.
So to get answers,
we headed east on a paper trail leaving
Indianapolis and heading to Martinsburg,
WV to find out.
In the heart of West Virginia's,
Shenandoah Valley is the city of
Martinsburg, population 17,000 a
step back in time, not far from the
Appalachian Trail and across town.
It's also home to a trail
of a different kind.
A paper trail with a whole lot of paper.
Now we get to the 4470 threes boxes
and boxes and boxes of paper
we're sitting on about 28,000 boxes of
records that are waiting to be processed.
Neal Trotman is program manager at
the ATF's National Tracing Center.
The only crime gun tracing
facility in the country.
Which means when a Police Department in
Indiana recovers a gun used in a crime,
tracking down the trigger.
And often requires help from someone. Here.
We treat every firearm trace request
that comes through the door as
an important piece of information
that may help solve a case.
Police and the details of the gun.
My name's Ethan. I'm calling from
the ATF National Tracing Center
from West Virginia.
The ATF begins to trace using make,
model and serial number.
First they call the manufacturer,
then follow the gun from the wholesaler
to the dealer to figure out who
ultimately bought it and where.
Essentially, the guns life story to
figure out who had it last details
every licensed firearms dealer is
required by law to keep on location.
But in the 21st century information age.
You know, time when pretty
much anything on anyone can be
found in a matter of seconds.
This process takes time because
the search isn't done online,
it's got to be done the
old fashioned way, correct?
It's all done the old fashioned way.
It's on paper, there's
no national registry.
There's no database of
gun ownership in America,
contrary to what what some people believe.
We even get calls from law
enforcement saying, hey,
can you run this to the system?
There's no system,
there's no database or registry.
There can't be the federal Gun
Control Act of 1968 prohibits the
government from maintaining any
searchable database of gun owners.
So answers are found thumbing
through page after page.
Believe it or not the system
is actually very effective.
We're able to obtain the information
that we need to get an accurate and
timely response back to law enforcement.
But here's where
things have slowed down
here in the community.
When a gun shop closes up for good.
All those transaction
records it had to keep
over the years can't
just be tossed out. So to martinsberg
all of it goes. They simply prep
those records. We scan them as static,
non searchable image files.
Think of it as a digital card
catalog that helps save space,
but the challenge is keeping up.
Right now we're receiving between 6
and 8,000,000 records per month from
dealers that are going out of business.
So much paper at one point the
floor was in danger of collapsing,
so these boxes, just, you know,
there's nowhere to put them inside.
They expanded outside using
a shipping container.
Today they're at 40 and counting.
Back inside, they're also tracing
more guns than ever before.
Half a million requests from
police departments across
the country last year alone,
including Indiana,
where the number of firearms recovered by
police from a crime and traced by the ATF,
has also increased year after
year because of all of it.
Tracing a gun today is taking
longer from four to seven days.
A few years ago to up to a week and a half.
Today it's four days versus 12 days.
Is that significant?
It can be obviously the quicker
we can get information.
Back to the requesting agency.
The more valuable that could be
if it's a time sensitive case,
the ATF can do what's called
an urgent trace for those cases
that can't wait like the FedEx
shooting in Indianapolis last year.
Or the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013,
but urgent traces are on the rise too.
As many as 25 a day. How
do you shorten the turn around time?
Additional resources,
additional funding?
Things like that.
Could certainly you know.
Maybe expanding operating
hours seven days a week,
things like that would
certainly assist us in
shortening that time again
after 23 years on the job,
Druckman says he's still confident
his agency is doing everything it can
in the war on crime and Indianapolis
and across the country. We're
assisting the law enforcement community
and essentially at the end of the
day we're putting bad guys in jail.
So it's taking longer to
trace a gun than it used to.
Is this impacting police investigations?
I asked detectives across central IN
about this and thankfully they said
no that that doesn't mean though it
won't in the future and that's why the
ATF is saying we need more manpower.
We need more resources because
the numbers just keep going up.
Really
interesting story, Dustin thanks.