Minimum Standards

Since judges were typically handing out sentences of less than a year for straw purchasers and just over a year for providing false information on a firearms application – the most common charges brought against gun traffickers – U.S. attorneys said that it wasn't worth their time to prosecute cases with only one or two charges against the defendant. The attorneys told ATF that if they wanted a gun-trafficking case prosecuted, the defendant needed a minimum of 10 to 20 separate offenses against him and there needed to be a tie between a gun the defendant had purchased and at least one violent crime. [More]

Hell, they should have just had their lab techs work the single purchases over until they could get them to malfunction out more than one shot per trigger squeeze...