With more than 300 million guns in the United States, the country has nearly one firearm for every citizen. Due to pressure from pro-gun groups, lobbyists and politicians, the federal government is prohibited from creating a national gun registry or a searchable database of firearms owners. In The Tracers, the US director Steven Brahms offers a disquieting tour through the National Tracing Center – the country’s only federal facility for tracing guns linked to crimes – where red tape is the rule of law, and the work of linking firearms to their owners is, by design, an absurd, antiquated process.