I found that the 4473’s were turned into the government after a home burglary 20 something years ago.That's never been a secret and it's been going on for decades.
I've probably shared this here before, but...
When I closed my shop I surrendered all my records according to the law. I surrendered my FFL and did everything I needed to do in terms of notifying the ATF.
Several years...like maybe 4 or 5...after I closed I got a call on my cell from ATF for a gun trace. I laughed and told the caller I'd been out of business for a few years and the ATF had my records. Her response was, "I guess that's the end of this trace." She said there was no way of knowing where those records might be as their backlog of processing out-of-business records was several years.
Yes...4473s can potentially be a data source for backdoor registration, even though that's illegal. And there are always anecdotal tales of bad things happening with 4473s and the ATF. But that's one story in 10s of millions of forms over the past several years.
No gun information is given to the NICS (other than rifle, handgun or other) when a background check is completed. Personally, I don't give a rat's a** if the ATF knows I bought another gun.
I didn’t have a record of the S/N on a couple of them, so called the FFL I’d bought them from. He had surrendered his 4473’s
Now the fact that creating files of 4473’s may be illegal in law, but is certainly not in practice. We see government agencies breaking the law daily it seems anymore with watchdog agencies submitting FOIA requests to uncover their lies and wrongdoing that nobody ever gets prosecuted for.
Those tens of million forms you spoke of can be read easily by high speed scanners and stored in searchable databases along with the data records from our phones and those pesky little Alexa devices that record our voices and are relayed to the government for “safekeeping” which is also illegal, or should be.
There is no illusion of privacy any more. The corrupt government has proven that over and over.