The same right wing, which claims that all we need to do is enforce the laws on the books, has had no problem blocking anyone from being nominated and confirmed to the post of the Director of the BATF. It’s a post that has been empty for six years.

Then, there’s the fact that the laws on the books are written with enough loopholes to drive fast and furiously past the graveyard of victims from all manner of firearms deaths.

For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions. So while detectives on television tap a serial number into a computer and instantly identify the buyer of a firearm, the reality could not be more different.

When law enforcement officers recover a gun and serial number, workers at the bureau’s National Tracing Center here — a windowless warehouse-style building on a narrow road outside town — begin making their way through a series of phone calls, asking first the manufacturer, then the wholesaler and finally the dealer to search their files to identify the buyer of the firearm.

About a third of the time, the process involves digging through records sent in by companies that have closed, in many cases searching by hand through cardboard boxes filled with computer printouts, hand-scrawled index cards or even water-stained sheets of paper.

In an age when data is often available with a few keystrokes, the A.T.F. is forced to follow this manual routine because the idea of establishing a central database of gun transactions has been rejected by lawmakers in Congress, who have sided with the National Rifle Association, which argues that such a database poses a threat to the Second Amendment. In other countries, gun rights groups argue, governments have used gun registries to confiscate the firearms of law-abiding citizens.

Advocates for increased gun regulation, however, contend that in a country plagued by gun violence, a central registry could help keep firearms out of the hands of criminals and allow law enforcement officials to act more effectively to prevent gun crime.

As has been the case for decades, the A.T.F., the federal agency charged with enforcing gun laws and regulating the gun industry, is caught in the middle.

It all comes back to the fear of confiscation of weapons. Never mind that there are some weapons that should be strictly limited on use.