General
ATF’s firearm destruction policy requires destruction of the entire firearm, including all parts. ATF does not resell firearms or firearm parts. ATF recognizes that state and local law enforcement agencies may have different laws and policies governing their disposition of seized firearms. If the policy of a state or local law enforcement agency is to lawfully dispose of firearms through destruction, the recommended best practice is to destroy the entire firearm, including all parts (slides, barrels, etc.). This is particularly important given the increasing criminal use of untraceable privately made firearms (“ghost guns”), which are often assembled with used firearm parts.
3-D Printing Technology of Firearms
Yes. ATF routinely collaborates with the firearms industry and law enforcement to monitor new technologies and current manufacturing trends that could potentially impact the safety of the public.
ATF enforces Federal firearms laws and, currently, these laws do not limit the technology or processes that may be used to produce firearms. However, ATF enforces existing statutes and investigates any cases in which technological advances allow individuals to avoid complying with these laws.
An individual may generally make a firearm for personal use. However, individuals engaged in the business of manufacturing firearms for sale or distribution must be licensed by ATF. Additionally, there are certain restrictions on the making of firearms subject to the National Firearms Act.
When ATF receives credible information regarding the illegal possession of firearms, it will investigate and take appropriate action. If individuals neglect to follow Federal laws and regulations surrounding firearms, ATF will investigate their activities.
ATF makes every effort to keep abreast of novel firearms technology and firearms trafficking schemes.
Any person "engaged in the business" as a manufacturer must obtain a license from ATF.
The term "engaged in the business" means— (A) as applied to a manufacturer of firearms, a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to manufacturing firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the sale or distribution of the firearms manufactured.
The applicant must submit ATF Form 7(5310.12)/7CR(5310.16), Application for Federal Firearms License, with the appropriate fee, in accordance with the instructions on the form to ATF. This form is for all FFL types, including type 03 Collector of Curios and Relics. An application packet may be obtained by contacting the ATF Distribution Center. If you have more than one Responsible Person (RP), you must also submit a Supplement to ATF Form 7/7CR, for each additional RP.
Yes, an "any other weapon" category is an NFA classification which requires an individual to register the item with ATF.
The term "any other weapon" means any weapon or device capable of being concealed on the person from which a shot can be discharged through the energy of an explosive, a pistol or revolver having a barrel with a smooth bore designed or redesigned to fire a fixed shotgun shell, weapons with combination shotgun and rifle barrels 12 inches or more, less than 18 inches in length, from which only a single discharge can be made from either barrel without manual reloading, and shall include any such weapon which may be readily restored to fire. Such term shall not include a pistol or a revolver having a rifled bore, or rifled bores, or weapons designed, made, or intended to be fired from the shoulder and not capable of firing fixed ammunition.
It is unlawful for any person to produce a firearm as proscribed in 18 U.S.C. 922(p).
"It shall be unlawful for any person to manufacture, import, sell, ship, deliver, possess, transfer, or receive any firearm—
(A) that, after removal of grips, stocks, and magazines, is not as detectable as the Security Exemplar, by walk-through metal detectors calibrated and operated to detect the Security Exemplar; or
(B) any major component of which, when subjected to inspection by the types of x-ray machines commonly used at airports, does not generate an image that accurately depicts the shape of the component. Barium sulfate or other compounds may be used in the fabrication of the component."
About BATS
BATS has a bomb technician-only RSP section to document and store information pertaining to Render Safe Procedures.
This section along with the bomb techs only advisory section is only accessible to agencies that have a valid bomb squad identification number, and to users that have a bomb squad expiration date that is not expired.
BATS contains Sensitive But Unclassified (SBU) information from law enforcement and public safety agencies in the Information Sharing Environment (ISE). BATS is certified as secure under the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and is Section 508, 1194.21 compliant (Software Applications and Operating Systems).
BATS contains information from the investigation of possible crimes involving explosives and fire as reported by local, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement and public safety agencies throughout the United States. This information is reported to BATS as a result of a variety of investigative actions including but not limited to incident responses, crime scene processing, and interviews of suspects and potential witnesses. The agency contributing information into BATS is the custodian/owner of that record and responsible for maintaining the original. This information is designated as case data collected by law enforcement in the performance of their duties and is exempt from the Privacy Act (5 U.S.C. § 552a(j)(2)). See also FOIA’s law enforcement exemptions, 5 U.S.C. 552(b)(7) which generally exempts from disclosure records or information compiled for law enforcement purposes.
Disclosures made under a non-federal agency’s State Public and Open Records Laws (including arson immunity laws) or other internal agency dissemination policy applies only to incident reports that the participating agency has contributed into BATS.
After completing the online application, the system will auto-reply to your designated email address with the necessary forms for completing the application process. Please reference the email response to your initial BATS application for downloading the necessary forms. If you did not receive an email reply, please check your spam or junk email folders. If you have deleted the email, please restart the application process online at www.BATS.gov. It is also recommended that you add USBDC@atf.gov on your safe senders list in order to prevent messages from being marked as spam.
Yes. The latest version of BATS includes icon-driven wizards and decision trees to quickly create an incident in a matter of minutes with the option to enter additional information in the future.
BATS provides your unit with state-of-the-art technology to manage and keep track of all your investigations and administrative activities. Users can easily create professional reports using standardized terminology for consistency. This provides the investigator with the ability to efficiently communicate investigative findings with a prosecutor and other investigators.
The value of the information in BATS is dependent on the quality of incident reporting. This data is not only important to the successful conclusion of the case being investigated but can also help “connect the dots” to other cases across jurisdictions.
The USBDC also provides Congress with statistical reporting regarding explosives, bombing, and fire incidents. Full participation in BATS enables your agency to be accurately represented and can better make a case to acquire needed resources (e.g., grant writing, statistics, mapping, identifying a community’s arson problem, juvenile fire setter programs, budget accounting/requests, planning, equipment requests, meetings with municipal leaders, etc.).
The 9/11 Commission declared that “the biggest impediment to … connecting the dots is the human or systemic resistance to sharing information.” This theme is universal to all investigations. A key recommendation was the creation of a “trusted information network” to facilitate better information sharing at the federal, state and local levels.
BATS is the solution to law enforcement and public safety’s long-term inaccessibility to real-time fire and explosives incidents by providing a trusted means to exchange information across the country. Investigations increasingly involve other jurisdictions and transient subjects who move around.
BATS can be used to document any explosives, explosion, fire, or arson case. This includes attempts and related threats.
The Activity section allows fire investigators to track their Certified Fire Investigator (CFI) training, re-certifications, courtroom testimonies, peer reviews and other non-incident responsibilities such as code enforcement.
BATS requires that if an Activity entry is part of an Incident, that related incident MUST also be entered into BATS. For example, an explosives Disposal (Activity) of Recovered Explosives (Incident), or a Fire Scene Examination (Activity) of a Fire (Incident). The USBDC reserves the right to remove access to BATS due to not reporting incidents.
