Sen. Bob Menendez [D-NJ] has filed Senate Bill 3299, a bill to repeal certain impediments to the administration of the firearms laws. As of this writing, the bill’s text is not available, but early indications are that this is a straight-up firearm and gun owner registration move.
Per Menendez’s press release the bill is aimed at:
- Ending the prohibition on the ATF from releasing firearm trace data for use by cities, states, researchers, litigants and members of the public;
- Ending the requirement for the FBI to destroy all approved gun purchaser records within 24 hours of approval;
- Ending the provision that makes it extremely difficult for ATF to retrieve firearms from prohibited persons who are mistakenly sold guns or from gun owners who become ineligible to possess guns;
- Ending the prohibition on ATF requiring gun dealers to submit their inventories to law enforcement;
- Ending the prohibition on public disclosure of data on multiple handgun sales, as well as gun sales information dealers are required to keep that may be required to be reported to the U.S. Attorney General for determining the disposition of one or more firearms in the course of a bona fide criminal investigation.
All of those records gathered, kept, and indexed amount to a complete registration system of firearms transferred through federal firearm licensees.
Bear in mind that the House has already passed HR 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, also known as universal background checks.
So should these bills get traction in the Senate, this would eventually result in the registration of the vast majority of firearms sold since the Gun Control Act of 1968 went into effect.
Notably, this would not track the estimated 3.5 million-plus stolen firearms that are in circulation. As always, the violence-enabling victim disarmers are only out to control honest people, and their legislation is deliberately ignoring actual criminals.
A full analysis of the Menendez bill can’t be done until the text is posted, but the press release makes this sound like not just registration, but gun owner doxxing, since the records would appear to be available to everyone.
That would, of course, include dispassionate academic “researchers” like Garen Wintemute, who’s famously been tracking them for years.
