We recently reported that eight Republican U.S. Senators sent a letter to Attorney General Todd Blanche voicing their concern over an illegal gun registry that contains more than 1.4 billion records.
“American citizens are entitled to exercise their Second Amendment rights without the federal government compiling searchable lists of their names and firearms,” Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said in a press release announcing the letter. “We ask for your decisive leadership to end this registry and prevent its expansion.”
Now, a Republican Congressman from Texas has taken the matter all the way to the top of the chain of command. On September 29, U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, sent a letter, also signed by 24 other members of Congress, to President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance asking them to look into the matter.
According to a press release from Rep. Cloud’s office, by law, the ATF is prohibited from maintaining a searchable federal registry of gun owners. However, when a gun dealer goes out of business, their “out of business records” (OBR) are sent to the ATF, resulting in the ATF having possession of millions of traceable records involving firearm make, model, and serial number.
In November 2021, Rep. Cloud led a letter to the ATF with 51 members of Congress, asking how many OBRs the agency kept. The ATF responded a month later, saying it had about a billion records in its possession. In February 2022, a follow-up letter to 36 members asked in detail about ATF’s firearm records and traces. After two additional follow-ups, ATF finally responded to Rep. Cloud in June, confirming their database has grown to more than 1.4 billion records.
That revelation prompted Rep. Cloud’s letter to the president and vice president.
“ATF has confirmed what we suspected: this unlawful database exists,” Rep. Cloud said. “This database functions as a national registry of gun owners – a violation of federal law and American citizens’ Second Amendment rights. This registry should be destroyed. The second it’s in the wrong hands, it’s a threat to every gun owner’s privacy and freedom.”
In the letter, members of Congress informed the president about the registry and explained its unconstitutionality.
“We write to alert you to an illegal national gun registry now containing 1,414,088,513 records of guns and gun owners,” the letter stated. “These records, maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) at its Martinsburg, West Virginia, facility, were obtained from out-of-business firearms dealers and include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and the specific firearms purchased. Federal law forbids this.”
The letter also explained that a 2022 Gun Owners of America analysis confirmed the database can be searched and filtered by make, model, and firearm type, allowing the creation of a targeted list of firearm owners.
“And when questioned, President Biden’s ATF director even admitted to circumventing these protections against federal gun registration,” the letter stated. “Even now, ATF is advancing a rule (RIN 1140-AA95) that would require dealers to retain transaction records for up to 30 years and then transfer them to ATF for another 30 years—effectively creating lifetime registration of every legal purchase.”
Ultimately, the congressmen requested that President Trump and Vice President Vance do three things—direct an immediate, independent investigation of ATF’s Martinsburg database, order the prompt and verifiable destruction of any records maintained in violation of the 1986 Firearms Owners Protection Act and the appropriations prohibitions, and ensure that any final rule on record retention fully complies with those same prohibitions.
