2,000 guns cross the border every day. Even if that figure is halved, it’s a trade worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

That was a tenth of total gun sales in 2008. Sales have doubled since then.

The idea in this story is that if the ATF were allowed to collect the paperwork gun sellers are required to fill out, or if gun sellers sent it to them when they were supposed to (for multiple hand gun purchases), and if they were also required to report multiple rifle purchases, and if the records were allowed to be indexed by name, the traffickers who smuggle them across the border could be traced and caught even while keeping gun sales legal. But these requirements are all opposed by the gun lobby.