What's Biden Doing With All Those Firearm Records?

The Biden administration is amassing a huge volume of gun ownership records, prompting gun owners to fear that he may be attempting to establish a federal gun registration program. And a gun registry is the first step to gun confiscation.

In just the first 10 months since he’s been in office, President Biden’s administration has collected the records of more than 54 million U.S. gun owners, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) records.

Those records were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by Gun Owners of America (GOA), a Virginia-based non-profit Second Amendment rights organization.

Everyone who purchases a firearm from a Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer is required to complete a form 4473, a Firearms Transaction Record, which sets into motion the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

However, the FBI, the ATF and all other federal agencies, departments or officers are prohibited by law from using NICS data to create a firearm owner registry.

That rule, however, doesn’t apply to licensed dealers.

An FFL dealer is required to maintain hard copies of all the ATF 4473s for 20 years, and if a dealer closes up shop, it has to send its copies of the 4473 forms to the ATF.

Gun Owners of America believes that the ATF’s actions, coupled with a new proposed rule change, may be an end-run around prohibitions against establishing a federal gun registration system.

"As if the addition of over 50 million records to an ATF gun registry wasn't unconstitutional or illegal enough, the Biden administration's misuse of ‘out-of-business' records doesn't end there," said Aidan Johnston, the GOA's director of federal affairs.

"Instead of maintaining the right of [licensed firearm dealers] to destroy Firearm Transaction Records after 20 years, buried within Biden's proposed regulations is a provision that would mean every single Firearm Transaction Record going forward would eventually be sent to ATF's registry in West Virginia."

Biden campaigned in 2020 on, among other issues, enacting stricter gun control measures, including placing semi-automatic sporting rifles such as the AR-15 into the same category as fully automatic machine guns.

So he no doubt dreams of establishing a national gun registry.

A gun registry has to include all firearms — not just those sold within the last 20 years by out-of-business dealers, which would account for the pending rule change.

However, to be truly effective, it would have to also include a universal background check system. As it stands now, guns gifted among family members or sold between friends are exempt from going through background checks.

Still, this could be a start — especially with Democrats’ continued insistence on universal background checks, something that author and columnist Ann Coulter warned against during an appearance on “Hannity” eight years ago. She concluded that the endgame of universal background checks was to give “the government ... a monopoly on guns.”

Coulter said, "Universal background checks means universal registration. Universal registration means universal confiscation, [which could lead to] universal extermination. That's how it goes in history. Do not fall for universal background checks.”

As Tom Knighton observed in Bearing Arms, a popular pro-Second Amendment news and opinion site, “What elevates this to problematic levels is the anti-gun campaign rhetoric of Joe Biden.”

Biden’s misunderstanding is the same as that held by many members of his own party — that homicides would go down if we simply banned guns. That’s not true.

First of all, a black market for firearms would always exist, and second, other means are always available.

What’s next? Banning knives? Bricks? Rocks?

On the other hand, guns are repeatedly used defensively to save lives.

We’re seeing that now with the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, who used an AR-15 in self-defense last year during a Black Lives Matter riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Without question the then-17-year-old Illinois resident had no business being there, but once he was, the firearm saved his life on three occasions.

Thirteen years ago Gun Owners of America released a fact sheet indicating that on the average, guns are used for self-defense 2.5 million times per year by law-abiding citizens, “the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers.” That comes to about 6,850 times a day.

But Biden appears ignorant of this fact.

Canadian professor and clinical psychologist Jordan B. Peterson wrote in “Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life” that “when ignorance destroys culture, monsters will emerge.”

And true to form, our culture is being destroyed before our eyes in real time, as the monsters, in the form Antifa thugs and Black Lives Matter Marxists, are wreaking havoc on the streets of America.

Enlighten the nation, eliminate the monsters, and restore order.