According to this article the city I live in is going to "start tracking stolen guns". There have been more than 2,000 guns recovered by police this year, typically at crime scenes. I know for a fact, because I have spoken to the ATF agent to does traces for the city, that guns recovered by police are already submitted to the BATFE for traces.
So either A) This is just theater or lying by politicians and describes something that is already happening
or B) The St Louis City Police Department has been willfully not submitting stolen guns that are recovered to the ATF, which begs me to ask why.
It is incidents like this that drive me to distrust the government's ability to do it's job at any level of competence, including the police.