Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) and other lawmakers have demanded answers from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) regarding its backdoor gun registry.
“We, the undersigned members of Congress, have waited patiently to know how many records ATF is currently maintaining in its illegal, digital, searchable gun registry, also known as the Out-of-Business Records Imaging System (OBRIS),” wrote Cloud.
The lawmakers who joined Cloud:
The Firearms Owners’ Protection Act of 1986 and the Brady Act made it illegal for the ATF to have a centralized firearm registry:
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. Nothing in this section expands or restricts the Secretary’s [1] authority to inquire into the disposition of any firearm in the course of a criminal investigation.
Unfortunately, gun dealers have to hand over records to the government if they go out of business.
Gun Owners of America (GOA) discovered that in 2021, during the Biden administration, the ATF had over 54.7 million out-of-business records.
Lawmakers first reached out to the ATF on February 14, 2025.
“Back in November of 2021, a document leaked by Gun Owners of America revealed the ATF was ‘processing’ over 54.7 million Out-of-Business Records (OBR) per year,” continued Cloud. “This prompted our first congressional investigation, which uncovered the shocking reality that the ATF currently had in its possession 920,664,765 gun registration records—the vast majority of which were digitalized and searchable.”
Cloud is sort of correct when he wrote searchable.
J.D. Tuccille at Reason wrote that a 2022 GOA report revealed that the ATF stored the files in PDF and JPEG formats when they should have been in paper format.
The ATF swore that no one can search by name in the digital files. Except:
What is more, it appears the only reason ATF’s registry is not searchable by name is because ATF has merely disabled the ability for its software to search that particular record field. Of course, something that is so easily disabled could be easily re-enabled. In other words, this terrifying and legally prohibited power resides at ATF’s fingertips, and American gun owners are merely relying on the agency’s promise that it is not and will not abuse that power.
A few more problems:
What ATF does not mention, however, is that throughout its processes to digitize and consolidate records, the records are received from dealers and maintained by ATF in fully searchable formats (including by name). Moreover, ATF’s centralized database, even in its final form, is fully searchable by text for any of a variety of other factors (just not by name, supposedly).
The GOA also discovered that someone could search the registry “by weapon type, make, model, serial number, and caliber, among other functions.”
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