The US Senate’s Civilian Disarmament Caucus has just introduced a bill that would, for all intents and purposes, create a national gun registry. They’re just politically savvy enough not to call it that.
If approved, the Gun Records Restoration and Preservation Act would repeal the following Tiahrt provisions:
- End the prohibition on ATF from releasing firearm trace data for use by cities, states, researchers, litigants, and members of the public.
- End the requirement for the FBI to destroy all approved gun purchaser records within 24 hours of approval.
- End the provision that makes it extremely difficult for ATF to retrieve firearms from prohibited persons who mistakenly sold guns or from gun owners who become ineligible to possess guns.
- End the prohibition on ATF requiring gun dealers to submit their inventories to law enforcement. (Gun dealer inventories facilitate enforcement of the federal law requiring dealers to report the loss or theft of firearms and help law enforcement oversee the more than 50,000 firearms dealers nationwide. According to a 2008 analysis by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, more than 30,000 guns in the inventories of firearms dealers were unaccounted for in 2007.)
- End the prohibition on public disclosure of data on multiple handgun sales, as well as gun sales information dealers are required to keep that may be required to be reported to the U.S. Attorney General for determining the disposition of one or more firearms in the course of a bona fide criminal investigation.
Joining (Dick) Durbin and Bob Menendez in cosponsoring the Senate bill are Senators Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Ed Markey, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand and Chris Murphy.
– Marsha Heller in Senators introduce bill to disclose federal gun records, tracing data
