Daily Caller News Foundation

Gun Owners of America (GOA) tore into the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) over a proposed rule targeting retention of firearms sales records.

ATF announced the proposed guidelines in a post on X Monday, stating that the agency would no longer retain firearms sales records “indefinitely.” GOA took exception to the proposal in its own X post Monday.

“If you bought a gun today, the paperwork wouldn’t be destroyed until July 5th, 2086 under this ATF rule,” GOA posted. “A gun store could keep a record of your gun purchase for 29 years 364 days and go out-of-business. Then ATF would keep the gun record for another 30 years. UNACCEPTABLE.”

According to the ATF’s proposal, the rules would shift to be closer in line with the rules in place after 1985, which mandated a 20-year retention of records. In 2022, the Biden administration altered the regulations to require retention of records until the Federal Firearms Licensee discontinued the business.

“ATF considered reducing the records retention period to 20 years, as it was prior to 2022, or to 30 years. Considerations in favor of 20 years were predominantly based on the longstanding practice and precedent that had been in place prior to 2022, except for I&M acquisition records,” ATF said in the Federal Register. “Returning to this retention period would offer familiarity and thus greater ease of compliance to industry.”

“Alternatively, proposing a 30-year retention requirement would similarly reduce storage burdens compared to the current post-2022 baseline of indefinite records, but would secure an additional ten years of records to facilitate possible traces for ATF and federal, state and local law enforcement,” ATF continued.

Comments on the proposed rule are open until August 4. ATF, the White House and the National Rifle Association did not respond to requests for comment from the DCNF.

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GOA Director of Federal Affairs Aidan Johnston told the Daily Caller News Foundation that while the Trump administration deserved praise for undoing the Biden administration rule and that addressing the issue of records retention was “huge,” the pro-Second Amendment group felt that keeping the records for as much as 60 years was “outrageous.”

“I think that’s an absurd amount of time to keep a record of a law-abiding citizen’s firearm that’s never been used in a crime,” Johnston told the DCNF, adding that the group believed any retention of records beyond 20 years was a violation of 18 USC 926, which prohibits the federal government from setting up a firearms registry.

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