By federal law, the ATF cannot create a gun registry, but all the building blocks for a future registry are falling into place especially with the scanning of documents.
Back in the 80's, part of the ATF was moved to West Virginia, the job was to take all 4473 and put them on computer data base, problem was that the program was never funded, the 4473 were stored in caves along with the FBI files. The program is now funded.