Sponsors
The bill centralizes and standardizes firearm-transaction records to speed tracing and improve law-enforcement efficiency, but does so in a way that raises significant privacy, access, and funding concerns for gun owners, licensees, and taxpayers.
Law enforcement and ATF employees gain a centralized, electronic, searchable firearm-transaction database that speeds firearm tracing, improves tracing accuracy, and makes investigations and dealer inspections more efficient.
Comptroller General audits and required biennial reports increase oversight and accountability of ATF's database implementation, providing transparency for taxpayers and Congress.
Licensees may voluntarily transfer old paper records to ATF after 10 years, reducing dealers' storage burdens and compliance costs for small businesses.
Gun owners and licensees face heightened privacy and surveillance risks because private firearm transaction records are consolidated in a government database and prohibiting PII searches does not eliminate reidentification from returned paper-record contents.
Database access provisions could expand non-law-enforcement use (including foreign intelligence purposes), increasing the risk that firearm-transaction data will be used beyond bona fide criminal investigations.
A mandate to implement the database 'notwithstanding' other laws or funding restrictions may oblige ATF to build and operate the system without dedicated appropriations, shifting costs to DOJ priorities or taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs the ATF to build searchable electronic databases of firearms transaction and disposition records, sets access limits, requires GAO audits, and mandates implementation within three years.
Introduced November 20, 2025 by Nellie Pou · Last progress November 20, 2025
Requires the ATF’s National Tracing Center to build and maintain electronic, searchable databases of all firearms importation, production, shipment, receipt, sale, and disposition records that licensed persons must keep. The databases must be implemented within three years, include rules limiting who may query them (law enforcement, foreign-intelligence, or inspection uses), allow ATF remote access to licensee records and, with state permission, certain state databases, and are subject to regular Government Accountability Office audits and reporting.