Comment on FR Doc # 2026-08929

I am a small, home-based Federal firearms licensee. I support replacing the current indefinite record-retention requirement with a definite period, but ATF should select 20 years, not 30 years, for Forms 4473 and the acquisition and disposition records covered by proposed 27 CFR 478.129. ATF should likewise adopt a true 20-year limit for consumer-identifying out-of-business records maintained by the National Tracing Center. The 20-year period is not an untested compromise. It governed these records from 1985 until the 2022 rule imposed indefinite retention. Returning to that established standard would restore a familiar compliance framework and reverse a recent, unnecessary expansion. A 30-year period would reduce the burden of indefinite retention, but it would still add ten years of paper or electronic storage, records management, inspection exposure, and protection of sensitive purchaser information compared with the longstanding rule. These burdens matter to small and home-based dealers. Paper records consume limited secure business space; electronic records require reliable systems, backups, security, and continuing administration. Those costs may appear modest when averaged across the industry, but they fall disproportionately on small licensees with limited space and no dedicated compliance staff. A 30-year requirement would also create a new standard with no demonstrated necessity when the former 20-year rule was workable for decades. ATF's own data support 20 years. The proposal states that approximately 89 percent of successful traces in FY 2024 and FY 2025 used records less than 20 years old. It also reports that, before indefinite retention began, traces closed because records older than 20 years had been destroyed represented only 0.34 percent of all traces in FY 2014, 0.31 percent in FY 2020, and 0.26 percent in FY 2021. A trace involving an older record is not necessarily a crime solved or even a trace to the current owner. ATF itself recognizes that older firearms are more likely to have passed through inheritance or secondary-market transfers that FFL records do not capture. The marginal usefulness of older records therefore declines with time. The final rule should also correct proposed § 478.127(c). As drafted, ATF would retain out-of-business records for 20 or 30 years from the date ATF receives them. That is not a genuine 20-year limit on transaction records. For example, a record transferred to ATF 19 years after a disposition could remain at NTC for nearly 39 years. To preserve the rule's stated privacy and burden-reduction purposes, ATF should destroy consumer-identifying out-of-business records no later than 20 years after the underlying disposition. If records contain multiple transactions, ATF should segregate or delete records according to each disposition date where practicable, or use the most recent disposition date only where a record cannot reasonably be separated. I also support the proposed 90-day retention period for Forms 4473 used solely for private-party transfers or voluntary firearm-handler checks, with the proposed five-year period for denied responses. This appropriately recognizes that records not involving an FFL's own firearm transaction should not become permanent dealer or government records. ATF should finalize the rule with a 20-year period, never 30 years, and should apply that limit consistently to both active-licensee records and consumer-identifying records held by NTC. Based on the rule's own evidence of diminishing tracing utility, ATF should also consider in a future rulemaking whether a shorter retention period would provide a better balance of legitimate investigative need, privacy, and small-business burden.