OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The Biden administration is stoking fears that it is building a national firearms registry in violation of federal law that could later be used in nefarious ways, critics say.
The Washington Free Beacon reported last week that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has amassed a database of nearly 1 billion gun purchases spanning several years in a letter the agency sent to a group of GOP lawmakers earlier this month.
“The ATFÂ disclosed to lawmakers that it manages a database of 920,664,765 firearm purchase records, including both digital and hard copy versions of these transactions,” the outlet reported.
“When a licensed gun store goes out of business, its private records detailing gun transactions become ATF property and are stored at a federal site in West Virginia. The practice has contributed to the fears of gun advocacy groups and Second Amendment champions in Congress that the federal government is creating a national database of gun owners, which violates longstanding federal statutes,” the outlet continued.
The ATF’s response to Michael Cloud (R-Texas), who initially contacted the agency in a letter that was signed by other Republican lawmakers, noted: “In total, ATF manages 920,664,765 OBR [Out of Business Records] as of November 2021. This includes digital and an estimated number of hard copy records that are awaiting image conversion. It is currently estimated that 865,787,086 of those records are in digitalized format.”
In an interview Monday evening with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of the signatories of Cloud’s letter, blasted the Biden administration for continuing to maintain the records.
WATCH:
You got the FBI going after parents, you got the DOJ setting up a domestic terrorism unit. Now we find out the ATF is going after law-abiding gun owners.
I mean, I — think about this, Hillary Clinton destroyed 30,000 emails while she was under investigation, and now every single gun purchase by a law-abiding American is being preserved. So what? So that the federal government can set up a national database?
This is scary stuff, what they’ve done to our First Amendment rights, and now what they’re doing to our Second Amendment liberties. All from one administration, all in a single year. So yes, there’s a number of us who are very concerned about this. And this is why we wrote the letter.
And frankly, we didn’t realize it was quite this number of purchases over the last 20-some years that the federal government is now compiling.
The Free Beacon noted that the ATF informed Cloud the database was initiated in 2006, which was during the latter part of then-GOP President George W. Bush’s administration, and has been maintained and expanded since.
But Jordan said that the most recent revelations about how large the database has grown should be taken “in context” regarding the current Democratic administration.
“It was just a few years ago, the IRS went after conservatives. Then we find out the FBI spying on a presidential campaign, then we learn that there’s all kinds of abuses in the FISA process, not just what you and I’ve talked about, and others have talked about. But the inspector general pointed it out with two separate reports, unbelievable abuses of the FISA process,” Jordan continued.
“Then you see just three weeks ago…in one day, we had the President of United States give a speech in Georgia, where he called half the country terrorist and racist. That same day, we learned the FBI and the DOJ have set up a domestic terrorism unit,” he added.
And that’s also the same day we learned that the Department of Education solicited the letter from the School Boards Association so they would have the pretext to do what they wanted to do, namely go spy on American parents, moms and dads showing up at school board meetings,” the Ohio Republican said.
“So that’s the context.”
