There is little doubt that the current gun sales regulations covering "licensed" gun dealers already on the books are just barely functioning. Constant interference by the NRA and outright self-interested meddling in Congress (frequently in service to the well-heeled gun lobby) existing regulations have been pretty much gutted and have crippled the ATF so that they are unable to come anywhere near the annual inspections of licensed dealers that they are allowed (a meaningless maximum inspection rate set by the NRA and happily passed by Congress).
In 2011 alone, the inspections of licensed gun dealers that the ATF was able to perform turned up nearly 177,500 guns that dealers could not "find" -- either in inventory or in their sales records. After a lot of work by the ATF with the dealers, the number was whittled down to 18,500 - a number the ATF called "a significant threat" to public safety. In 2010 they discovered 30,000 missing guns, so this is not an anomaly.
Seems like a pretty weak set of regulations, which are no good unless they have enough teeth. Frequently all a dealer has to do is turn the business over to a relative, appeal a license revocation in court which will take years to resolve while they continue operating, or even worse for the public, take the inventory "private" and escape any kind of regulation at all.
The NRA keeps saying "enforce the laws we have". The current laws are not doing the job -- but if the NRA would 'do the right thing' for a change and stop crippling the very enforcement that they claim to encourage, things might be very different.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/01/12117/atfs-struggle-close-down-firearms-dealers
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