Lawmakers Call for Destruction of ATF’s Illegal Gun Registry

A national gun registry is illegal in the United States, yet the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has one, according to lawmakers who are calling for the destruction of more than a billion gun-related records.

Representative Michael Cloud (R-Texas) sent President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance a letter on Tuesday telling them the ATF has firearms records it has no business having. “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 begins. “Federal law forbids this. The Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 prohibits ‘any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions.’”

In addition to Cloud, 23 other House members signed the letter, dated September 29.

Last week, eight senators sent an identical missive to U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche.

The lawmakers are asking for an investigation into the ATF’s database and for the “prompt and verifiable destruction of any records.”

Massive Database

According to the letters, the “invasive database” has grown from about 920 million in 2021 to the 1.4 billion records today. The information is being held at the ATF’s facility in Martinsburg, West Virginia. The records were “obtained from out-of-business firearms dealers and include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and the specific firearms purchased.”

Gun Owners of America (GOA) Federal Affairs Director Aidan Johnston called the existence of the database “truly shocking.” He told Just the News, “No one in their right mind can look at ATF’s digital, searchable 1.4 billion record database of firearm transactions and tell me that isn’t a gun registry.”

The ATF denies having a registry — it prefers the term “tracking system.”

History of the ATF

Johnston pointed out that a major reason for the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA) in the first place was because the ATF was accused of similar chicanery back then. He told Just the News:

In 1986, Congress saw what ATF was doing in collecting these records, trying to enforce the Gun Control Act of 1968, and they said, “Hey we should really stop this agency from creating a gun registry.”

FOPA amended the Gun Control Act in a number of ways. It narrowed the definition of “dealer,” clarifying that someone who occasionally sells a weapon or trades with another person is not a firearms business dealer. It got rid of federal record-keeping for ammunition sales. And it banned a firearms registry and barred the federal government from keeping track of which owners have which firearms.

Not surprisingly, the 1968 Gun Control Act was created as a response to a crisis. As LegalClarity.org explains it:

The assassinations of President John Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. pushed Congress to act on firearms. The Gun Control Act of 1968, along with Title IV of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, dramatically expanded federal firearms regulation. The Gun Control Act established federal oversight of interstate and foreign firearms commerce, created new categories of firearms offenses, banned the sale of firearms to felons and other prohibited persons, and imposed the first federal jurisdiction over destructive devices like bombs and grenades.

Four years later, the head of the U.S. Treasury signed an order creating the modern-day ATF, placing it under the Treasury department. Before that, the responsible agency was the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division under the IRS. That traced its origins all the way back to the 19th century, to the Office of Internal Revenue and the government’s agenda to collect taxes on alcohol and tobacco.

In the 21st century, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 prompted the ATF’s transfer to the Justice Department. And recently, the White House proposed moving the agency to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Long Record of Misbehavior

The ATF has a long history of controversies and misbehavior. It was responsible for investigating and arresting Randy Weaver in 1991, which devolved into a disastrous shootout that resulted in the deaths of federal agents and members of Weaver’s family. The government ended up paying Weaver a $3.1 million settlement.

Shortly after that, the ATF descended on Waco, Texas, to serve a search warrant to the Branch Davidians over allegations that they were making machine guns and explosives. That operation went south quickly and, in the end, nearly 90 people died, including a handful of federal agents and a lot of children.

The there’s the 2009-2011 ATF scandal “Operation Fast and Furious,” which produced the opposite of its purported intended results. As we previously summarized:

Operation Fast and Furious was [program of Barack Obama’s administration] in which the ATF helped put heavy weapons into the hands of murderous drug cartels in Mexico. The whole scandal exploded when a federal agent was murdered with a Fast and Furious gun. As the story threatened to bring down key Obama officials, the spin was put out that it was all part of a supposed “investigation” into “drug cartels.” However, massive amounts of evidence emerged in the subsequent months and years suggesting that it was actually a criminal operation to blame the Second Amendment for violence, with the supposed targets of the alleged “investigation” already on the FBI payroll. Indeed, top lawmakers and gun-rights activists have said the operation was intended to be exploited by Obama to push gun-control, but it blew up in the administration’s face when federal agents blew the whistle.

Many believe the ATF exists primarily to threaten, diminish, and eventually eradicate Americans’ Second Amendment right. The discovery of this registry bolsters that belief, as one of the first steps toward confiscation is a registry.

Tyranny Follows Disarmament

Gun confiscation has a history of being followed by tyranny. The Third Reich eliminated Jewish gun ownership before killing millions of Jews. The Bolsheviks ended ordinary civilians’ right to keep military-style firearms before the communists killed millions of Russians. And in modern times, Canada, England, and Australia have become police states since significantly curbing or outright abolishing gun rights. These are countries where people were arrested for social-media posts or having too many people over (as happened in Canada during Covid).

The federal government does not have the enumerated power to regulate firearms. Several lawmakers over the years have introduced legislation to abolish the ATF, with the latest coming from U.S. Representatives Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Eric Burlison (R-Mo.). You can learn more about their legislation and how you can help make it a reality by visiting The John Birch Society’s “Abolish the ATF” legislative alert.

Instead of more finger-wagging, theatrical hearings that produce nothing and empty promises of reining in the agency, the best solution is to shut the ATF down. It is clearly a threat to our Second Amendment.