Does ATF want seized property notices noticed?

May 11, 7:48 AMGun Rights ExaminerDavid Codrea

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     Notice the notice that's not being noticed...

Last week I told my blog readers about a seized property notice published by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in a three-page ad in the Thursday, May 7 edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Per the notice, appearing on pages B-8, B-9 and B-10:

Any person claiming an interest may file a petition for remittance or mitigation of forfeiture or file a claim with the undersigned on or before the last date to file; otherwise the property will be forfeited & disposed according to law. Mail to BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO FIREARMS & EXPLOSIVES, ATTN: SEIZED PROPERTY, 99 NEW YORK AVENUE NE, WASHINGTON, D.C. 20226. Otherwise, the property will be administratively forfeited pursuant to 19 USC 1608 and will be disposed of according to law.

"The last date to file"?

FIRST NOTICE
DEADLINE TO FILE CLAIM 06/21/2009
AGENCY CASE NO, DATE SEIZED,
STATUTE CODE, PLACE SEIZED
ASSET ID, ASSET DESC,
APPRAISED VALUE

"On or before" 6/21 doesn't leave a lot of time to get the word out, and many of us are questioning why ATF considers this notice in a financial paper with limited circulation appeal sufficient for getting the word out. As one person asked, "Why not USA Today?"

I go further: Why not the Internet? ATF has a website. They've already compiled the information for their notice. How hard would it be to just post it?

The answer is, "not very," but it is considerably harder for me. I visited the library this weekend and photocopied the notice. Because of the original page size, I had to copy each page in sections. Then I scanned it and uploaded it.

The bottom line is, without having the electronic file, the process from start to finish, including travel time, took me around four hours. Had they wanted to, ATF could have made this available on the Internet in a matter of minutes and then put out a press release. And they could have done it with all the bells and whistles--a nice user-friendly searchable file...had they wanted to.

Because of my limited skills in such things, I created a Word document and pasted in pictures of the pages. It ain't pretty, but it's legible, and it gives you the same thing the printed newspaper does: readable information.

Click here to download Seized Property Notices Word file.

A word on navigating and accessing the document before you get started

Because of the size difference in pages, I had to break each page up. Pages B-8 and B-9 required six pages each to copy the information to. Page B-10 required four pages.

Because of that, I have labeled each section by page number and placement: Top left, top right, center left, center right, bottom left, bottom right all refer to how I segmented the original newspaper page. To further help navigate, because there is no clear cut-off between segments running on top of and below each other, I provided underlining to show where one page leaves off and another begins.

For instance, to transition from page B-8 top left to B-8 center left, which appears directly below it in the original, you'll see I underlined the word "DELAWARE" as the "registration" point.

Sorry if this seems confusing. Again, it would be completely unnecessary if ATF would have just posted a searchable database or even just a text document on their website, so this is the best workaround I'm capable of coming up with.

Also, some people have told me they have problems downloading from Skydrive when they click on the icon--if that happens, also note there is a "Download" link on the top left of my public folder page. Finally, I have saved the document as a Word 97-2003 file. That ought to accommodate most users--in any case, it is the best I can do. If your computer can't open it, perhaps a friend can save it into a format that will work for you.

I expect this list will now make the rounds in gun forums, blogs, email lists, etc. Because this presentation needs an explanation, if you do pass it around, and I gave up a good part of my weekend working on this in the hopes that you will, please provide the url to this column, not to the Skydrive server where I have the document stored for download.

UPDATE: Alternative document link with embedded window provided here.