In recent years, politicians and gun control advocates have claimed tracing unserialized firearms used in crimes may be harder than tracing their commercial variants. This argument is made when assessing ATF's ability to use the serial numbers of firearms associated with crimes to perform "trace requests" through The National Tracing Center (NTC), a division of the bureau that provides investigative leads for local, state, federal and foreign law enforcement agencies. However, ATF NTC uses other technologies and forensic expertise when serial numbers are not present, or have been altered or obliterated from firearms, and local detectives, prosecutors and U.S. Attorneys have many other resources and investigative powers aside from NTC when working gun crimes, including the NIBIN. Additionally, as was seen in Operation Fast and Furious the ATF was unable to trace their own guns that had serial numbers.