There are a lot of times when we’re told we have to submit fingerprints. I had to do it when applying for my carry permit here in Georgia, for example, and that’s still the rule, though constitutional carry makes it a little less of a pain for most people.
For NFA items like suppressors or machine guns, you’ve long had to submit fingerprints with your application. I always figured it was to make sure you were really you and not some felon pretending to be you, though it’s not like bad guys routinely send paperwork to the ATF.
It turns out, though, the entire thing was a waste of time for everyone involved.
You see, the ATF is looking at doing away with the requirement of two fingerprint cards when applying for an NFA item. You’d still need to submit one, but they also made something of an admission that I find interesting.
The ATF admits: The fingerprint requirement isn’t actually useful
In 2016, the ATF published a final rule, “Machineguns, Destructive Devices, and Certain Other Firearms: Background Checks for Responsible Persons of a Trust or Legal Entity with Respect to Making or Transferring a Firearm,” which required background checks on NFA RPs and enacted the fingerprint requirements.
“Nine years after the 2016 final rule, ATF recognizes that, even if it has the statutory authority to require fingerprints and photographs from both NFA and GCA RPs and individual applicants, the current regulations on those topics largely no longer serve a useful purpose,” the proposed rule states. “In almost all cases, fingerprint cards are of little utility to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (‘FBI’) when it conducts National Instant Criminal Background Check System (‘NICS’) background checks on applicants to make, transfer and register NFA firearms or to become GCA licensees. According to ATF and FBI subject matter experts, fingerprint cards have only been helpful (and used) for NICS purposes in processing fewer than 1 percent of these applications. Similarly, 2″ x 2″ passport-style photographs serve little specific utility as a means of verifying an NFA or GCA applicant’s identity.”
In other words, as I said, a waste of everyone’s time.
Granted, they still require a fingerprint card, but that’s in the text of the NFA itself. They don’t have the authority to wipe that one out, even if they wanted to. Considering that fingerprint technology was state of the art in 1934, though, I’m not surprised it was included, and there’s absolutely no way we’re going to get that bit removed. Not in this day and age, at least.
Still, the fact that it was helpful in only one percent–fewer than that, actually–of applications is fascinating.
Then again, it’s not like criminals are going to go through the whole rigamarole of applying for an NFA item, even under a fake name, when they can get something from a black market dealer with a bit less headache and less chance of being caught by the feds because you accidentally used Senator Whats-His-Junk’s son’s Social Security number or something.
The ATF is trying to update the NFA process as much as they can within the law, which I respect. It’s a nice change of pace, to say the least.
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