Confiscation? Turns Out, the ATF Has a Secret Database Of “Nearly One Billion Gun Records”

If you’ve ever purchased a firearm from a gun store, you’ll know that filling out a form (ATF Form 4473) which is then sent off for an “instant background check” is required.

Now, the ATF is required by law to destroy its copy of the form after checking to make sure you’re not a felon. That was part of the deal when the background system was created.

Turns out, and this should be no surprise, the agency that NFA President Wayne LaPierre called a bunch of “jackbooted thugs,” isn’t keeping its word. In fact, it has a secret database of nearly one billion gun records, all of which it was supposed to destroy. News on that comes from Gun Owners of America, which found out about the database and announced it in a recent video:

Here’s the most important quote from the video: “In total, ATF manages 920,664,765 OBR 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 a digitalized format.”

Almost a billion forms, a near-complete registry of American gun owners. The exact opposite of what the ATF was supposed to do, but something we knew all along that it wanted to do.

More about the ATF’s gun registry database, a database that it shouldn’t have, is in this video:

The main fact of importance is that all this information gives the ATF what amounts to a national registry of gun owners. Thanks to the large amount of personal information required by the form, if you’ve bought a gun from anyone other than a friend that didn’t require a form recently, then the ATF knows all about you and what guns you own. It knows all your personal information and exactly what firearms you have purchased.

Now, the ATF justifies the database as a “crime prevention” issue. In its view, by keeping track of who owns what guns, it can better solve crimes when a firearm is recovered, saying that “the vast majority of criminal firearms traces are done for state and local law enforcement agencies pertaining to active investigations.”

Problem is, whatever its potential helpfulness, the ATF isn’t supposed to be keeping a database of gun owners. Many tyrannical things are “useful” if you’re the tyrant, but that’s not supposed to matter. What matters is the letter of the law, and it doesn’t permit the ATF to have a registry of gun owners.

Remember, much as liberals and RINO sophists decry the “slippery slope” argument, it’s almost always true that each little step of government control leads to yet more government control. The form was supposed to just be a form making sure you weren’t a felon or on a watch list. It turned into a registry. The registry is supposed to just be for “fighting crime.” What will it turn into if the Democrats outlaw “assault rifles?” A tool for confiscation, that’s what.

The 2nd Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear arms. The ATF database of gun owners is dangerously close to infringing on that right.

By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.