Authored by Aidan Johnston, Federal Affairs Director for Gun Owners of America,

A group of 27 members of Congress, led by Representative Michael Cloud of Texas are sounding the alarm on the expansion of ATF’s illegal registry of guns and gun owners.

According to a recently released letter, addressed to ATF Deputy Director Robert Cedaka, ATF has not responded to a previous inquiry regarding the expansion of the registry. These Congressmen are concerned that ATF may now have over a billion records in their registry.

Originally, in 2021, Gun Owners of America revealed that the ATF was “processing” over 54.7 million “out-of-business records” per year.

Following this revelation, a Congressional investigation was started. This investigation uncovered the shocking reality that ATF had over 920 million gun registration records in a centralized, searchable, digital database- in total violation of federal law.

In 1986, Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act, or FOPA. A portion of this act bans the federal government from ever keeping a searchable database of gun owners.

The exact text of the law reads like this:

No such rule or regulation prescribed after the date of the enactment of the Firearms Owners’ Protection Act may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or dispositions be established.

Every tyrannical government on earth has first disarmed its population before committing terrible atrocities upon them.

From Nazi Germany to Communist Russia, to even as recent as Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, once populations are disarmed the Government is free to do as it pleases, often at the great peril to its own citizens.

Knowing this, a provision banning the US Government from creating a centralized registry was placed into the Firearm Owners Protection Act.

But the bureaucrats at ATF didn’t like that and decided to go around the law and create a registry anyway.

And during the Biden Administration, the conditions were created for further expansion of this registry.

For example, President Biden directed his ATF to modify a regulation that allowed dealers to destroy firearms transfer records after 20 years. Instead, he mandated that these forms could no longer be destroyed.

What reason would the federal government have such an interest in firearms transaction records, unless it was to create a gun registry?

But there was one problem; the registry could not be expanded without gun dealers (FFLs) going out of business.

President Biden had a solution for that, he proclaimed a new policy for ATF, “zero tolerance.”

With this policy, dealers could have their federal firearms license revoked, and therefore would be put out of business, allowing the ATF to capture more of those out-of-business records for its registry.

And that’s exactly what ATF did.

In the years of zero tolerance, FFL license revocations skyrocketed. ATF broke records, revoking more licenses during the Biden-era than it had in over 20 years.

Finally, thanks to President Trump and FBI Director (then ATF Director as well) Kash Patel, the zero-tolerance policy is no more.

But ATF’s illegal registry still exists and is still growing. To make matters worse, ATF is currently refusing to respond to congressional inquiry about the registry.

In Rep. Cloud’s letter, he writes:

“[W]e are also troubled by ATF’s lack of a response to our investigative inquiry. Your continued refusal to provide basic information raises serious questions about whether the ATF—despite changes in leadership and stated priorities—remains in compliance with several congressional appropriations restrictions, a federal statute, and the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.”

ATF must respond to Rep. Cloud’s letter. In addition, we’re calling on the Trump Administration to work with us at Gun Owners of America and our allies in Congress to completely destroy ATF’s illegal registry once and for all.