Rep. Michael Cloud introduced legislation Monday that would stop the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from accumulating gun transaction data and would require the agency to destroy the information it has already collected.
''The Biden administration continues to threaten the rights of law-abiding Americans,'' Cloud, R-Texas, tweeted Tuesday afternoon. ''Texas gun owners are rightfully concerned that this administration is willing and able to create a federal gun registry, and it's Congress' job to ensure that doesn't happen.''
The Washington Free Beacon reported at the end of January that the ATF revealed to lawmakers that it manages a database of 920,664,765 gun purchase records, including both digital and hard-copy versions of the transactions.
According to the Free Beacon, when a licensed gun store goes out of business, its private transaction records become ATF property and are stored indefinitely at a federal site in West Virginia. The Texan reports that licensed gun stores are required to maintain records of firearm transactions for up to 20 years.
The ATF is seeking a rule change that would require licensed gun stores to maintain records indefinitely rather than for 20 years, according to The Texan.
Gun advocacy groups and Second Amendment champions in Congress fear that the federal government is creating a national database of gun owners, which they say violates long-standing federal statutes.
''A federal firearm registry is explicitly banned by law,'' Cloud told the Free Beacon in January. ''Yet, the Biden administration is again circumventing Congress and enabling the notably corrupt ATF to manage a database of nearly a billion gun-transfer records. Under the president's watch, the ATF has increased surveillance on American gun owners at an abhorrent level.''
Cloud's bill would also require that licensed gun stores destroy their transaction information when they close permanently to ensure that the ATF cannot access it.
Breitbart News reports that Cloud's bill — known as the No Registry Rights Act — is endorsed by the House Second Amendment Caucus, led by Chairman Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Co-Chair Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.
The congressman's office told Breitbart that the bill ''is the first piece of legislation they've pushed as a caucus.''
According to The Texan, 44 Republicans have co-sponsored the legislation.
Cloud, who is seeking reelection, bested four challengers in the March 1 Republican primary. He faces Democrat Maclovio Perez, a former TV weatherman, in the general election on Nov. 8, according to the Caller Times.
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