Eight U.S. senators are demanding that Attorney General Todd Blanche investigate what they call an illegal national gun registry built from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ out-of-business records (OBRs). Those records now number 1,414,088,513.
The Sept. 24 letter, led by Sen. James Risch (R-Idaho) and sent to Blanche at the Department of Justice, also went to ATF Director Robert Cekada. Joining Risch were Sens. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.).
Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the senators treat the OBR holdings as a registry of guns and gun owners, not a passive archive.
“We write to alert you to an illegal national gun registry now containing 1,414,088,513 records of guns and gun owners,” the letter states. “These records, maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) at its Martinsburg, West Virginia facility, were obtained from out-of-business firearms dealers and include names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and the specific firearms purchased.”
🚨BREAKING🚨
ATF’s illegal gun registry now contains 1,414,088,513 records, 92% of which are digitized, the agency confirms to Congress.
Registration data includes the names and addresses of gun owners as well as the make, model, and serial number of their firearms. pic.twitter.com/j4AjLw6rBp
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) September 29, 2026
The Three Demands
The senators argue federal law already forbids what ATF is doing and that Congress does not need to pass another statute before the executive branch acts. They cite the Firearm Owners’ Protection Act of 1986, which prohibits “any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions,” and annual appropriations riders that bar ATF from centralizing the records and searching them by name.
They urge Blanche to:
- Direct an immediate, independent investigation of ATF’s Martinsburg database;
- Order the prompt and verifiable destruction of any records maintained in violation of the 1986 Firearm Owners’ Protection Act and the appropriations prohibitions; and
- Ensure that any final rule on record retention fully complies with those same prohibitions.
“Congress has already spoken. The American people need executive action to enforce that law,” they wrote. “American citizens are entitled to exercise their Second Amendment rights without the federal government compiling searchable lists of their names and firearms. We ask for your decisive leadership to end this registry and prevent its expansion.”
Risch has separately pushed the No REGISTRY Rights Act, which would require ATF to delete existing firearm transaction records and block any future registry.
How the Records Grew
The letter notes that the White House has described the holdings as an “invasive database.” According to the senators, the count has grown from roughly 920 million records in 2021 to more than 1.4 billion today, about half a billion more in four years.
A 2020 leak obtained by AmmoLand News showed ATF processing more than 50 million gun records a year. Later that year, ATF told Congress it held more than 920 million records. That disclosure produced the No REGISTRY Rights Act and a string of appropriations-rider drafts. A 2026 ATF update put the current total well over a billion.
A 2022 GOA analysis found the database can be searched and filtered by make, model, and firearm type, which the group said would allow targeted lists of owners. When pressed, then-ATF Director Steve Dettelbach acknowledged ATF pays extra to have search functions stripped out of Adobe Acrobat.
Vice President JD Vance has framed the same collection as a back door to registration. “This database is ultimately a back door to a gun registry in this country,” Vance said on Fox News. “And if you look at what liberals have done in Europe, what they’ve done in Australia: once you allow a gun registry, you effectively allow the disarming of your citizenry. This is ultimately about destroying the Second Amendment.”
The senators also flag a pending ATF rule (RIN 1140-AA95) that would require dealers to keep transaction records for up to 30 years and then send them to ATF for another 30 years—what the letter calls “lifetime registration of every legal purchase.”
Cloud’s questions and ATF’s reply
The 1,414,088,513 figure comes from ATF’s response to Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas), who has pressed the bureau for a current count and for proof that decades-old records are needed for traces.
In that response, ATF said the National Tracing Center (NTC) “maintains OBRs and provides critical trace information to assist our local, state, federal, and international law enforcement partners when investigating crimes.” One example ATF used to justify keeping the files was the identification of the attempted assassin of Donald Trump in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
“The identification of the attempted assassin in Butler County, Pennsylvania, is merely one example of the critical work that the NTC carries out every day to help our law enforcement partners investigate violent crime,” ATF wrote.
According to ATF, traces using records more than 20 years old accounted for 10.35 percent of 623,654 traces in 2022. Traces run on records 10 years old or older but less than 20 years old accounted for 8.57 percent of all traces using OBRs. ATF also said OBRs are used to complete 51.39 percent of trace requests for guns purchased more than 20 years ago.
Cloud asked for concrete evidence that records older than 20 years are useful. ATF pointed to those percentages. The bureau wrote that crime-gun traces “consistently require the use of records from out-of-business FFLs that are at least 20 years old,” that NTC traces identified a first purchaser more than 75 percent of the time (75.2 percent in 2025), and that among successful traces the first-purchaser records were at least 20 years old 12.86 percent of the time, based on the annual average since 2017.
“Finding the crime gun’s first purchaser—even one from 20 years ago—is important lead information, as it gives law enforcement investigators a starting point for asking questions about the crime gun’s chain of custody,” ATF said. “Without these records, law enforcement would be denied investigative leads 12.86 percent of the time.”
ATF acknowledged the privacy concerns in Cloud’s letter and tied its proposed change to President Trump’s 2025 Executive Order on Protecting Second Amendment Rights, which directed the attorney general to review firearm and FFL rules. From that review came a proposed rule to replace indefinite retention of FFL records with a 20- or 30-year period for ATF Forms 4473 and acquisition-and-disposition records, and the same window for the OBR Center at NTC. Records are now kept indefinitely. ATF invited comments on the notice of proposed rulemaking.
Cloud also asked for a list of the “crime codes” ATF cited in an earlier reply. ATF did not provide them. It is unclear whether that was deliberate or an oversight. Those codes would show whether the traces involve serious violent crime or lesser offenses.
He also asked for a breakdown of the holdings. ATF’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system holds 912,184,571 images. That system digitizes ATF Form 4473s. Records converted from microfilm or microfiche to digital format total 397,009,400. Another 104,894,400 still await conversion.
What happens next
ATF continues to describe the Martinsburg files as a tracing tool, not a registry, and says name search is disabled. The senators say the size of the collection, the data on each record, the growth since 2021, and the pending 20- or 30-year rule add up to a registry in everything but name.
Blanche has not publicly answered the Sept. 24 letter. The senators asked him to investigate the database, destroy records they say are unlawful, and keep any final retention rule inside FOPA and the appropriations bans.
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About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and constitutional activist with more than 26 years of experience in networking and cybersecurity for major Fortune 100 companies. John has written about firearms, the Constitution, and cybersecurity, and has interviewed people from all walks of life. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons. Follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.
