ATF is Repeatedly Violating Firearm Trace Data Laws! Arrest Them! - Ammoland.com

Someone at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) believes it is easier – or more politically convenient – to roll over to gun control activists and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit than it is to defend a federal law protecting firearm trace data.

For the second time in less than a year, the ATF chose to ignore the Tiahrt Amendment – the federal law that prohibits the disclosure of sensitive firearm trace data to anyone outside of law enforcement circles for use in a bona fide investigation – and instead released it to the public.

This time, the ATF handed over the trace data to The Trace, the mouthpiece for the activist gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety. Just six months ago, ATF handed over firearm trace data to USA Today through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request – despite the fact that firearm trace data isn’t subject to FOIA requests.

The Trace, hardly a bastion of objective journalism and once described as an “agitprop outlet” – chose not to challenge a Ninth Circuit ruling that the agency had to hand over protected firearm trace data to Stop US Arms to Mexico, a nonprofit in Oakland, Calif. That was after John Londsay-Poland, the group’s founder, requested the data for U.S.-made firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, broken down by the U.S. states, counties and ZIP codes from where they were purchased.

ATF denied the request, initially at least. That’s because the Tiahrt Amendment states that the ATF cannot release that information outside of law enforcement circles. Lindsay-Poland sued and the Ninth Circuit agreed that the information must be released. However, less than a month later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that firearm trace data was protected and could not be released.

That’s a circuit court split.

The ATF – which reports to the Department of Justice – should have recognized that there is disagreement between the circuit courts, setting up a question for the U.S. Supreme Court to consider. The Ninth Circuit had 78.6 percent of the cases challenged from that court overturned. In 2022, 11 of the 14 cases that were challenged were overturned. Percentage-wise, the Ninth Circuit doesn’t lead in cases overturned. The Fourth, Fifth, Tenth and D.C. Circuit along with state courts led those percentages, but had far fewer cases reviewed, with three, three, eight, two, one and five, respectively.

That track record indicates that the ATF and DOJ might have had a fighting chance to argue that the Ninth Circuit erred in their judgement to order the release of the protected firearm trace data.

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