Tue Mar 8, 2022 AT 3:43 PM EST
A bill circulating through Congress would stop the Biden administration from stockpiling records on American gun owners by altering federal law to allow firearm dealers to destroy sales records.
The bill, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, is a response to the Free Beacon’s January report detailing how the Biden administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has amassed nearly 1 billion records detailing American citizens’ firearm purchases, a figure that is far higher than Congress and the public has been aware of.
Rep. Michael Cloud, R.-Texas, a chief critic of the ATF’s gun database, is spearheading the legislation, which is likely to garner support from a wide range of Republican lawmakers but few Democrats in the House. The bill, dubbed the No REGISTRY Rights Act, would require the ATF to delete all existing records detailing American firearm sales. The ATF has been collecting this data for years, even though U.S. law prohibits the government from keeping a federal database on gun owners. Read Full Story