Joe Biden seems to be secretly keeping an illegal database of American gun owners. A coalition of 36 Republican lawmakers, spearheaded by Michael Cloud of Texas, started investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. They’re probing nearly one billion records which ATF stockpiled, illegally detailing Americans’ firearm purchases.
Illegal database of gun owners
When Representative Michael Cloud and his conservative colleagues got wind that ATF honchos keep a secret collection “of 920,664,765 firearm purchase records,” they took sudden interest.
Most of those records are “digitized in a searchable database.” The problem is that it’s illegal. “Congress has long prohibited the “ATF from maintaining a national gun registry.”
Before they get drastic, the group warns in a letter, the concerned lawmakers “urge” the ATF to “consider rescinding the proposed regulation.” They also point out how flimsy the arguments in favor of the database are.
“The evidence provided by ATF thus far demonstrates that such records likely have little utility in prosecuting crime, yet raise serious concerns about whether ATF is creating a prohibited national gun registry.”
The investigation flatly accuses ATF of planning to “sweep up records of every gun sale in America.” If, as the agency claims, the database is primarily used to track guns used in crimes, then why doesn’t it work for that?
The ATF freely admits “that it does not have the ability ‘to determine the successful prosecution of hundreds of thousands of crime gun traces.’” What’s it good for then? They demand “concrete evidence” the ATF can “demonstrate that records older than 20 years are useful or necessary for ATF to complete firearm traces.”
Register and confiscate
The real reason for the database, critics insist “is to track legal gun owners.” Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America notes “ATF is not collecting and digitizing these records because they want to protect the Second Amendment — they are doing it because they want to register and confiscate our firearms.”
It will come in real handy “later this year, when ATF implements Biden’s ban on up to 40 million pistols.”
There’s no other reason to change to the law requiring gun stores to keep their records “in perpetuity” instead of 20 years. When a licensed firearm dealer goes out of business, its records must be transferred to the ATF for upload into the database. That’s only one place the information creeps in from.
“ATF, however, also maintains other archives with firearms purchaser information, including the Multiple Sales System, Access 2000, and the Firearm Recovery Notification Program.” Cloud’s coalition is demanding those records too.
“Americans have every right to be concerned about the Biden administration misusing their power to create an illegal federal firearms registry, and it’s up to Congress to get to the bottom of this,” Cloud insists. They are. They want all the dirty database details.
“Please provide a breakdown of the trace requests conducted and percentage of traces for firearms that required records which were 10 years old, then 11 years old, and for every year after up to 20 years.“
