One of the last places to modernize inventory control and technology was/is gun stores. Because of the general distrust over digital records (big brother fear to the extreme in some cases) many stores operated on paper only even if the other half of the pawns shop or jewelry store was computerized.
I recently put in a Wireless RFID tag system and wireless network in a large locally owned gun store in town. THis store had made the news quite a bit over the last 10 years or so due to break ins caused by a bad safety ordinance that required all business to have no key exit access from the building (no double sided keyed deadbolts) the robbers broke the window beside the door and let themselves in and stole a few shotguns and cheap jewelry. City changed ordinance to allow certain business like gun stores. A few years later paperwork resulted in them being unable to account for quite a few guns. After an outside company came in and audited they were able to locate records for almost every gun. The shop paid over 20k to that 3rd party company and it took a long time mainly because there were no computerized records. but let me get back to my point.
I work in healthcare IT but I am and avid shooter (plinking, competition (IDPA), 3 gun and buy lots of stuff from this store. The owner and manager and approached me to inquire if i could assist them in modernizing the store computer systems esp. inventory system. I suggested a tagging system that used RFID tags attached to each gun on receipt and is deactivated at time of sale. the system allows them not only to see whats on the floor but whats in stock as well. Also if a tag has not been located in a determined set of time the system alerts. They now have realtime inventory and asset tracking. the cost for the system was kind of high just because of the volume of weapons this store has and the need to have quite a few sensors to do in store location tracking. (how much on the floor how many in main display cabinet how many in processing how many in warehouse/stockroom.
My point to all of this was to say I believe with modernization of inventory control systems at the local store level we can help prevent "missing guns".
= new reply since forum marked as read