"DO AS WE SAY NOT AS WE DO!"; Serious problems with the ATF's own record keeping

As was the case in 2000, when he first responded to a Congressional request to evaluate ATF's response to three questions asked by the Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service, and General Government Appropriations http://www.nfaoa.org/documents/2001statement.pdf, Dr. Scheuren said: "ATF has serious material weaknesses in its firearm registration system which it has yet to acknowledge," and that his reading of the 1998 audit reports on the NFRTR by the Treasury Department Inspector General "suggests that very serious problems were uncovered in ATF's recordkeeping systems. In fact, in my long experience, I cannot think of an instance where poorer results were obtained."

In the same Congressional statement in which the foregoing appeared, a nationally recognized expert on firearms law, Stephen P. Halbrook, advised the Subcommittee to " . . . investigate this matter further . . . [and] . . . [u]nless and until BATF can conform its records to acceptable standards of accuracy, the Subcommittee should consider legislation to prohibit use of the NFRTR database in civil and criminal proceedings."

The errors to which Dr. Scheuren and attorney Halbrook are referring are summarized in this table of NFRTR errors http://www.nfaoa.org/documents/SummaryNFRTRerror1.pdf, which have long been known to the Government. Indeed, information about these errors was created by the Government itself. The situation is egregious enough that Dr. Scheuren is planning (as his letter to Chairman Mollohan states) to include the NFRTR in the 2nd edition of his book on statistics and administrative records, which will probably be published in the spring of 2008. In the Washington, D.C., environment, considerable expertise can be brought to the issue of the validity and reliability of a federal law enforcement data base, and perhaps this is what it will take to render the NFRTR accurate and complete.