Eric M. Larson
	P.O. Box 5497
	Takoma Park, Maryland 20913
	(301) 270-3450
	larsone@erols.com

April 24, 2000

Mr. Daniel Bryant, Esq.
Subcommittee on Crime
207 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, D.C.  20515

Dear Mr. Bryant:

I recently became aware of a letter the Treasury Department Inspector 
General (IG) sent to the Congressional Leadership in Dcecember 1999, 
regarding recommendations the agencies have not implemented.  Included 
among these are two recommendations about errors in the National Firearms 
Registration and Transfer Record (NFRTR).  I have enclosed a copy of this 
letter, and the section which pertains to the NFRTR, to assist Chairman 
McCollum in his examination of these issues.

There's a tone in the IG's statements I frankly have difficulty 
understanding, given ATF's virtually complete lack of responsiveness to 
the IG's recommendations.  ATF has known since at least 1981 that 
thousands of machine guns and similar items are registered to people who 
are dead, and still declines to do anything about it.  For the past 5 
years, ATF has withheld key information about the type and extent of 
errors in the NFRTR, a position ATF has taken so recently as March 30, 
2000, in denying me access to yet another NFRTR data manual---one that 
the IG directed ATF to release to me under an August 14, 1999, Freedom of 
Information Act (FOIA) request.  

The IG isn't much better than ATF in some regards, either.  After paying 
$551 in December 1999 for a copy of the IG's work papers (2,500 
pages)--and getting a call from the IG in February stating that my FOIA 
was being expedited--I have still not received any of the IG's work 
papers.

I believe ATF isn't doing anything to correct errors it created in the 
NFRTR, because there is no easy way to correct them.  The problems go 
beyond simply indexing and reorganizing whatever NFRTR records ATF 
has--and there are some doubts that ATF is capable of doing even that, 
because ATF still won't release data tables by ATF form for individual 
years of original registration.  Also, no amount of  "cleaning" or 
"editing" or "correcting/amending" the NFRTR will be able to reconstruct 
registrations that ATF has destroyed.   

It is my sincere hope that the Subcommittee will also consider dealing 
with the NFRTR as a budget line item in collaboration with the 
Subcommittee on Treasury, Postal Service and General Government, and 
require that fiscal year 2001 funding of the NFRTR be contingent upon (1) 
ATF submitting a specific, written plan to correct all of the errors the 
IG identified, including priorities and a timetable for completion; and 
(2) an independent forensic audit of the NFRTR by some qualified entity 
other than the Department of the Treasury.

	Sincerely,

	(signed---Eric M. Larson)