New Senate Measure Would Repeal Tiahrt Amendment, Enable Federal Gun Registry
New Senate Measure Would Repeal Tiahrt Amendment, Enable Federal Gun Registry
U.S. Sen. Andy Kim, D-New Jersey, has introduced a measure that would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, paving the way for a national gun registry.
Sen. Kim says the measure, called the Gun Records Restoration and Preservation Act, is designed to help trace illegal gun trafficking and so-called “gun violence” in America.
What the bill would actually do
In a nutshell, the legislation would:
Repeal provisions requiring all background check records to be destroyed within 24 hours
Eliminate the prohibition on processing of FOIA requests about firearm traces
Repeal limitations that prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventory audits
Eliminate the prohibition on consolidation in the DOJ of firearms acquisition records maintained by federal firearms licensees
“We need to use every tool at our disposal to combat gun violence tearing our communities apart, but right now we are cut off from seeing the full picture,” Sen. Kim said in announcing the measure. “This legislation would unlock critical data and make sure we can fully examine the flow of guns from the very start and take action before more lives are lost.”
The Tiahrt Amendment is what stands between gun owners and a federal registry
Of course, that’s just Sen. Kim’s story. What the measure would actually do is repeal the Tiahrt Amendment — a provision of the U.S. Department of Justice’s 2003 appropriations bill that prohibits the ATF’s National Tracing Center from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation. Consequently, it is the only thing that stands between lawful gun owners and a federal gun registry.
There are good reasons Tiahrt exists in the first place As the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action has pointed out in the past when such changes are proposed, there are several good reasons for continuing to keep this information confidential.
For one thing, releasing the information serves no useful purpose. The Congressional Research Service has repeatedly said “firearm trace data may be biased” and “cannot be used to test for statistical significance between firearm traces in general and the wider population of firearms available to criminals or the wider American public.”
Additionally, traced guns aren’t always “crime guns” — firearms may be traced for reasons unrelated to any armed crime. The ATF trace request form lists “crime codes” for traffic offenses and election law violations, among many others. Trace information also remains available for law enforcement use. Lastly, both the ATF and the Fraternal Order of Police oppose release of trace data. In fact, the ATF has fought for years in the federal courts to keep trace records confidential.
The Biden ATF already showed what happens when Tiahrt gets violated
Incidentally, the Biden Administration violated the Tiahrt Amendment on several occasions. In one of those, the Biden ATF inadvertently sent Gun Owners of America unredacted FOIA documents in violation of Tiahrt, then secured a court-mandated gag order to prevent GOA from using the information.
“What is at stake here bears emphasis,” GOA said in a news release at the time. “If anti-gunners obtain Tiahrt-protected data, they will use it to harass urban gun stores and high-volume retailers in civil lawsuits, alleging that a high number of trace requests implies these businesses carelessly transfer firearms to criminals. That data can make all the difference in anti-gunner lawfare.”