Basically, the ATF is trying to get back guns from purchases that were "72 hour precedes" that should have been NICS failures. NICS has 72 hours to complete a background check. Usually it is complete in a few minutes, however, at times it takes a much longer time to process. In an effort to keep behind the scenes chicanery from stalling lawful commerce, policy is for NICS to give the FFL the authorization to "precede" with the sale even if the check is not complete.
At least 4,000 times in the last year there have been precedes that later turned out to be unauthorized persons. Now they are trying to get the guns back from the purchaser. Of course they are not saying how successful they are at it.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/12/daniel-zimmerman/feds-issued-orders-confiscate-guns-4000-prohibited-persons/Original story:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/12/04/exclusive-feds-issue-4-000-orders-seize-guns-people-who-failed-background-checks/901017001/I actually have no issue with the NICS program, though states (and the .mil apparently) need to do a better job of contributing disqualifying information to it.
I definitely would not want the job of trying to reclaim guns from NICS failures though. Mostly looks like a typical USA Today hatchet job. It skirts around an interesting question on the NICS system and what generates a long check and are there any patterns to a NICS failure. Also, what do they need to make NICS work better (come back with a deny/approve faster)? You can't really say there is a reason to not have more paper pushers helping process it. They are not ATF employees, they are FBI employees, so I don't see the old political hot potato of giving ATF more resources.
I think a better measure than using expensive federal resources to go after those who fail a NICS check is to issues some kind of paper on it and send it to the county sheriff and state police where the purchase was made. That might be a good filter, if the locals are concerned by the individual's NICS activity that is probably a better screen than the feds. If nothing else, its surely less dangerous for all parties to let the locals do normal process serving on the individual than sending the ATF, who honestly are better suited to going after larger smuggling operations anyway. They are revenuers better suited to going after higher level criminal enterprises anyway.
