Would Bring ATF Into The 21 st Century Vermont Business Magazine Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) and Representative Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-NJ-09) Tuesday reintroduced the Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act of 2021, their bill to modernize the capabilities of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to trace crime guns. After a firearm associated with a crime is discovered somewhere in the United States, federal, state or local law enforcement officials contact ATF, which then must recreate the chain of custody of the firearm. But ATF is prohibited by law from electronically searching millions of gun sales records already in its possession. The absurd result is that ATF must comb through mountains of paper records manually, an extremely laborious process that delays timely investigations and drains law enforcement resources. Their legislation would update this process from the age of paper records to the age of electronic records, to enable electronic searching of these same records, aiding law enforcement authorities in catching criminals faster and potentially saving lives.