Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can say with certainty that as of 6 years ago, 4473 checks were not retained in any way by the ATF or the federal government. There are local copies of the paperwork retained the FFL in which the sale took place, and those are required to be kept for a period of time and, should the FFL ever close shop, those records are shipped to the ATF, possibly revealing record data to them, but at least at the point of the NI…
> I can say with certainty that as of 6 years ago, 4473 checks were not retained in any way by the ATF or the federal government. To clarify, are you saying that no government entity retains either the 4473 or the NICS check records, or are you only speaking about the 4473 itself?
That said, the NICS system is managed and run by the FBI, so I can't speak authoritatively there. In dealing with them regarding it though, the impression I got from their tech team was that it wasn't storing anything past receipt acknowledgement, and even where it stored data, the implication was that it only stored the metadata there as well, uniquely identified by the NICS transaction ID.