For the second time this year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has released sensitive firearm trace data that disregards federal privacy law.
The Tiahrt Amendment is a provision of the U.S. Department of Justice 2003 appropriations bill that explicitly prohibits the disclosure of firearm trace data outside of law enforcement engaged in legitimate investigations.
The first time this occurred was when a list of federally licensed firearms dealers (FFLs) was released to gun control groups and the media back in February in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from USA Today and Brady United. The information that was released included the identity of federally licensed firearms dealers (FFLs), the existence of trace requests, the number of traces received (at least 25), and the “time to crime” for those traces.
This time, the ATF released the data to The Trace, a media outlet affiliated with the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. When The Trace had initially filed the FOIA request, the ATF denied it, citing the Tiahrt Amendment. John Lindsay-Poland, the founder of the organization, sued, and the Ninth Circuit court ruled in his favor.
However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that firearm trace data was protected and could not be released. According to the data from 2022, 78.6 percent of the cases challenged from the Ninth Circuit have been overturned.
In a press release from April, Congressman Jeff Duncan (R-SC) stated, “The illegal release of this list of FFLs is nothing more than an assault on the reputation of these American businesses—giving Americans another reason to not trust the ATF. The ATF has been weaponized by the Biden Administration to target law-abiding citizens in the past with the pistol brace rule, and now to cause irreconcilable harm to FFLs across the nation. The list does nothing to prove guilt as proven by the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Department being ‘named and shamed’ by the ATF as a firearms dealer that supplied guns to criminals.”
Chris McNutt, President of Texas Gun Rights, voiced his frustration: “This blatant disregard for the law shows that the ATF is more interested in appeasing gun control activists than upholding their legal responsibilities. They’re not protecting law-abiding gun owners; they’re targeting them.”
McNutt added, “All of the guns in the trace data were purchased by individuals who successfully passed a background check. So there is no reason to demonize the stores where these guns were initially sold.”
He said these instances highlight fundamental flaws in current gun control measures that unfairly target legitimate businesses.
