4. What is the obsession with tracking ammunition purchases?
it already has been tried, from 1968-1986 and it was found to be of no use. I know what their reasoning is, that they believe they can track behavior and hopefully be able to identify a correlation between an amount purchased and the likelihood of a crime being committed. the fact is that their really isn't any difference. It is like trying to track drunk drivers by requiring reporting of beer sales. Mass shooters usually don't by ammunition in amounts that would be an outlier. Some people by a 50 rounds of ammunition at a time, others buy 5,000. It really depends on the person. That person that is buying 5,000 rounds- are they likely to be planning a rampage- probably not. 5,000 rounds of 50 BMG would be abnormal, but 5,000 rounds of .22lr would not (in fact, 5,000 rounds of 22 lr in boxes would fir into a small carry on sized suitcase- to give you an idea of how unimpressive it would like). Some shooters like to buy in bulk- lower prices and they know thye only have to go to the gun shop or order a few times a year. Others don't do alot of shooting so buy only when they decide to go- and only the amount they expect to use that one time.
It's a gigantic waste of time. You are going to waste Law enforcement resources going over data which really shows no discernable pattern.
Also, the only way to make it concievably work would be to require each box/bullet to have its own serial number and have that number registered to that person. But that is unrealistic. What happens if i meet up with my friends to go shooting and we decide to put all the ammo boxes into one container so we don't have to bring as much stuff? What happens if we have the same exact type of ammo from the same manufacturer (which is very common)? What happens if we hit a bump and stuff gets mixed up? Am i supposed to spend a half hour going through each bullet to seperate mine from theirs? How am I supposed to remember all of that? What if I wrote it down and made a mistake, misread a number? Do i go to jail?
I hope you see how silly and convoluted it would get. You would end up with innocent people being arrested and put in jail- whose only crime was that they made the very common human mistake of misreading numbers.