Senators Marshall, Risch and GOP Colleagues Introduce the No REGISTRY Rights Act

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senators Roger Marshall, M.D., Jim Risch (R-ID) and Congressman Michael Cloud (R-Texas) introduced the No Retaining Every Gun In a System that Restricts Your (REGISTRY) Rights Act, which would prevent the U.S. government from creating a federal firearms registry.

The No REGISTRY Rights Act would:

• Require the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to delete all existing firearm transaction records;
• Allow federal firearms licensees (FFLs) to destroy transaction records when they go out of business; and
• Prevent the ATF from creating or maintaining a firearms registry in the future.

Marshall and Risch are joined by U.S. Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Steve Daines (R-MT), Pete Ricketts (R-NE), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Tim Sheehy (R-MT), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) and 47 members of the House of Representatives in introducing the No REGISTRY Rights Act.

The No REGISTRY Rights Act is supported by Gun Owners of America.

BACKGROUND:

Under current law, Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs) are required to transfer firearm transaction records to the ATF when the businesses close. These records are stored in the ATF’s Out-of-Business Records Imaging System, which now holds nearly one billion records. This database lays the groundwork for a federal firearms registry.

In April 2022, the Biden Administration published a final rule demanding that FFLs preserve all firearm transaction records indefinitely. Since 1984, federal regulations have allowed FFLS to discard records older than 20 years, as the “time-to-crime”—the period between a firearm’s last known legal sale and its use in a crime—rarely exceeds two decades.