THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

Because they can continue to be a hazard to women and children but, thanks to the diligent efforts of America's biggest terrorist organization, there is no registry for the greatest threat in this country to those women and children.

Lawmakers convene next week under pressure to consider limits on the purchase of assault rifles. But as congressional aides on both sides of the debate scramble to draw up background reports and statistics on the issue for their bosses, they’ll run into a basic informational roadblock: No one has any idea how many assault rifles are in circulation.

That’s intentional. By law, the government isn’t allowed to gather that metric and put it in a modern, searchable electronic database.

“Those numbers don’t exist because there’s no national registry,” said Jan Kemp, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “Because by law, we are not allowed to have a national registry.”

The gun industry’s argument against a registry that tracks the sale of guns goes like this, according to former ATF agent Mark Jones: If the government kept a database on firearms sold, it would have a de facto registry of gun owners, and if that existed, then the government would be just a step away from being able to confiscate people’s guns.

“The gun industry says they’re afraid that the government will come and take their guns away,” Jones said.

Jennifer Baker, director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association, said the NRA is opposed to any sort of national gun registry, and said that knowing how many assault rifles are in circulation would be of no help to lawmakers considering legislation. (The NRA also has come out against raising the minimum age to buy an assault rifle to 21.)

“There’s no reason for the government to have a registry,” Baker said. “There’s no public safety reason for this other than having a roadmap to confiscating guns.”

The Feb. 14 shooting that killed 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has heightened scrutiny of assault rifles. The killer used an AR-15 rifle, one of the most popular weapons in America both among general gun owners (the National Rifle Association calls it “America’s Most Popular Rifle”) and mass shooters (it has been used in 11 mass shootings since 2012, according to Stanford Geospatial Center, Stanford Libraries and USA Today research). AR-15 rifles and their cousins are special because although they are semi-automatic weapons and therefore only fire one bullet each time the trigger is pulled, they are known for being accurate and easy to modify with accessories such as extended magazines, to shoot hundreds of bullets without reloading, and bump stocks, to allow faster shooting.

Parkland student survivors have been calling for a ban on all assault weapons in the wake of the shooting, while President Donald Trump has voiced support for raising the minimum age to buy such weapons from 18 to 21. Trump said he has spoken with many members of Congress who support the increased age restriction.

The National Firearms Act forbids “any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established.” Several restrictions added to congressional appropriations bills also prohibit ATF from requiring gun dealers to submit their inventories to law enforcement. The effect is to prevent ATF from setting up a system that would allow electronic retrieval of gun owners’ personal identification information, and from consolidating or centralizing records provided by firearms dealers.

Practically, that means firearm dealers retain their own records on gun sales and only give that information to ATF when or if they go out of business. Once with ATF, the records must be stored in a non-electronic form that is not easily searchable – currently in a warehouse of paper files in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The ATF cannot request information, such as how many AR-15s have been sold that year, from firearms dealers, and searching their own paper database for that information is next to impossible.

But there is no need for the killers to worry, the Trump administration is currently dismantling the ATF so that even if they allowed to do anything, there won't be anyone in the office to do so. And it is probably just as well there is no count of the amount of weapons available, the number would probably make you sick.