Should I be concerned?

[ithinkimamedic]

So I called the NFA branch the other day to check the status of the 2 form 4's I have out. When I called I talked to a very nice lady who was more than happy to help me (this is good). She asked me for the SN of said item. So I give her the SN for the first one and she says that there is NO RECORD FOUND! (shit!) so she asks for the other one. I give her than and it comes back that it had gone pending back in feb. We then revisit the first SN I gave her for accuracy. I tell her the info on my form 4 and the SN starts with an O (letter) on my F4. She said let me check something and does something on the computer and says ahh, I've found it. They have it listed starting with 0 (zero) not O (letter) which is clearly on my F4. I haven't called my dealer yet (didn't think to until now). Has anyone ever had this happen to them? Any ideas what path I should proceed with now or just words of advice from those of you who have done many times?
Thanks all
Cheers,
josh

[Gun Bowanna]

Call the dealer and let him know.
Only he can have them change it to a letter "O" instead of a "0"zero.
It's happen to me a few times with letter "I" and number "1".
No big deal really, if she found it in the registry, you should be pretty sure an examiner found it also.

[Pa. Patriot]

Could all be avoided if people would start writing 0's correctly. IE, with the / through them.

[ithinkimamedic]

Rich, I agree whole heartedly!

[GunLawyer001]

This is the reality underlying the somewhat famous statement made by an ATF supervisor (I believe it was Gary Schaible), that the NFA Registry is not 100% accurate, but they will swear it is 100% accurate when in court.

Their spin on this is that the records require multiple checks, because of the problem that you cite; the computer distinguishes between zeroes and ohs, between the number 1 and the letter "l", between the letter z and the number 2. What you see on the receiver is not always what's in the Registry. Worse, the flunkies who entered the data over the years have often been semi-literate drones, who transpose letters and numbers in the serial numbers, the names of the owners, the manufacturers. Some of them even shredded documents so that they didn't have to do the work of processing them.

We have a serious problem when ATF has to implement formal procedures for checking for all the possible mis-spellings and typos, yet never hints at this to the jury when they swear that the item in question is not in the registry, so the defendant must go to jail. ATF is correcting it's registry during compliance audits, if the FFL isn't a problem and has the tax stamps, ATF assumes that it's legitimate, even when ATF has no record that it can find.

For individual citizens, however, if you lose your copy of the stamped & approved Form, and ATF has also lost (or misfiled) its record, then you're screwed.

This is what we get when we tolerate institutional perjury.

[fullauto223]

ithinkimamedic, that sucks the big one. I never had that problem yet with 20 NFA toys

Hopefully once the the typo is corrected there is no more waiting for them to be mailed

[ithinkimamedic]

OK. I talked to my dealer today (forceinpa) and he's calling the NFA branch tomorrow to get this sorted out. Will follow up when I know more, thanks for the advice everyone.
Cheers,
Josh!

[RandomTask]

Could all be avoided if people would start writing 0's correctly. IE, with the / through them.

I'm pretty sure a guy like Bjørn Rørslett would have something to say about that!

[fullauto223]

ithinkimamedic, WELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hell, I just about shot the bore out of my two new SBR's

we might have to get that range trip planned








fullautoineedtobuild4moretargetstands223

[Frenchy]

This is exactly why many places will not use i and o or L on their items, Quebec licence plates do not have those as 1 I and l are often confused, the only value for I, l is 1 (quebec does also not have personalized plates)

Where I work, we have no o (O'S) on any account number, all 0 "ø"
We also do not have I or L on any account numbers. SO even if there was a typo, it is read as what that letter or number can ONLY represent.

In a world where Dyslexia is ever so present, it is not rare to see N be Z or W be M, even E and 3 and 4 and A be a problem. There are a surprizing amount of people who confuse those every day.
If you want to see if you have this Dyslexic problem, try reading some thing upside down or from the top to botom

Z
0
V
3
W
B
E
R

If you had no problem making a word out of those letters, you are probably able to read upside down.

There is also the problem with "Expected" letters in words such as "TH", "AU" and so many others where once you see a letter, you EXPECT the next letter to be the one that would naturally be there in a word. IE:

Te Atomobile..

It is natural to want to insert letters in there and or Remove ones that usually should not be in there as in PfiSzer .

This is why a long time ago, there was a system devised to "Spell" out Letter or number combinations during the war, This is often known as the Phonetics alphabet.
Almost every one who works in radio or Telecommunications will recognise the value of it.