I don't know whether the guns went 'missing; during transit, but I believe the ATF inspections were done at the manufacturing facility. Once they're in transit I would assume ATF would recognize they were no longer under the manufacturers' control.
As for dealers "losing" paperwork for thousands of guns, it's possible but doesn't that sound kind of fishy? I worked in inventory control. It's not rocket science. We were a regulated industry, OTC drugs, there were certain inventory items that we had to be able to account for every gram. It involved accounting for tens of thousands of units, literally millions per year. We did it. We had no choice.
What kind of business people are these dealers? That they have so much trouble controlling their inventory, given the potential to sell 'under-the-table,' it's hard to accept chalking it all off to sloppy bookkeeping.
For a good example, we can look at the case involving the Traders:
The audit found 3,659 firearms on the premises -- but the store's records indicated there were 9,100 firearms in its inventory. Cucchiara and ATF inspectors tried to reconcile the discrepancy and discovered an additional 2,036 weapons could not be accounted for -- bringing the total unaccounted for to 7,477, court documents showed.
Most of those weapons were tracked down, according to Cucchiara, but when the ATF issued its final notice of revocation in December, 1,767 remained unaccounted for, the ATF said.
With ATF and the dealer working together to reconcile the paperwork, they went from 7,477 "missing" to 1,767 - huge numbers if you don't take into account that the Traders probably sold 2,500 firearms a week, M/L
WRT paperwork and firearms - In California there are regulations requiring a seperate state form called the Dealers Record of Sale to be filed w/ the state in every handgun sale (soon to be required for all long guns as well in 2014), a form detailing the purchaser passed a safe handling test for the handgun purchased along with a copy of the purchaser's handgun safety certificate and a thumb print on the DROS form -all this along with the federal 4473 form.
If any of that package turns up missing in an ATF audit, including the state mandated forms, they consider it a failure on the part of the dealer to properly maintain the required firearm purchase documents, and if the missing paperwork is the 4473, they consider that to constitute a "missing" firearm (note that this is for retail dealers, not manufacturers) from the dealer's inventory.
In high volume dealers like the Traders, it is very possible that one employee starts the purchase process, another takes over at some point and the ball was dropped - a savvy buyer will bring it to the attention of the salesperson involved (I have) but not every buyer knows the exact process required - the sales man doesn't touch third base and nobody catches it during the ten day waiting period, and the dealer has an issue w/ ATF at the next audit.
I don't doubt that crooked dealers exist - I know for a fact that there have been FFL holders that bent or broke the law and were tried and convicted when caught, ATF doesn't muck about when they have a dealer on the hot seat - and please notice in the Trader's case, the issue was resolved by the surrender of the FFL, not criminal prosecution - if they had the goods on Tony, he would have been in federal criminal court.
I would love to have the authority and funding to really look into this issue, but nobody is asking me for my opinion. If it was up to me, and we could prove a dealer or manufacturer was crooked, I'd hang them from the same tree I'd hang someone that criminally used their firearm against another person.
