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<\/a><\/p>\nBelow are Subcommittee Chairman Higgins\u2019s remarks as prepared for delivery:<\/p>\n
Today, the Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement convenes to conduct critical oversight of the agency charged with executing our Nation\u2019s firearms laws \u2013 the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We are honored to be joined by ATF\u2019s newly confirmed Director, Robert Cekada.\u00a0\u00a0Director Cekada boasts decades of experience and distinguished service within ATF and law enforcement.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Director Cekada\u2019s deep expertise\u2014and his respect for the law and constitutional rights\u2014should give us optimism about ATF\u2019s future posture toward law abiding gunowners and the Second Amendment generally.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Strong, principled leadership at ATF is all the more important now given the agency\u2019s inexcusable disregard of Second Amendment rights over the past several years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One acute example has been ATF\u2019s repeated failure to abide by a federal law prohibiting the dissemination of firearms trace data, known popularly as the \u201cTiahrt Amendment.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Firearms trace data is information about the chain of gun ownership and sale beginning from the point of manufacture\u2014maintained by the ATF\u2019s National Tracing Center, or \u201cNTC\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of a 2003 Department of Justice appropriations bill, the Tiahrt Amendment precludes ATF from sharing this data with anyone other than prosecutors or law enforcement agencies in connection with criminal investigations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The purpose of this law is clear. Failure to abide by the Tiahrt Amendment exposes informants, undercover officers, and lawful federal firearms licensees, or FFLs, whose safety would be endangered by the revelations.<\/p>\n
Despite Tiahrt\u2019s obvious importance to police and public safety, recent history has shown that ATF has flagrantly disregarded the law. Some violations of Tiahrt have seemed unintentional, associated with accidental data disclosures while responding to FOIA requests.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, other violations clearly stem from the political and ideological opposition some ATF unelected bureaucrats have for the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are several glaring recent examples, particularly during the Biden Administration. To begin, the Biden ATF assisted gun control groups in creating a map of gun shops, including those owned by Members of Congress, by providing Tiahrt-protected data as part of a FOIA request. ATF\u2019s release of this data was a clear violation of federal law and intended to help anti-Second Amendment groups.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Separately, the Biden ATF inadvertently disseminated Tiahrt-protected data as part of a FOIA request to the group Gun Owners of America, also known as GOA.\u00a0\u00a0ATF subsequently secured a gag order to prevent GOA from sharing the data.\u00a0\u00a0GOA, supported by several First Amendment groups, sued to retain access to the data by virtue of First Amendment press freedoms.<\/p>\n
Dishearteningly, this disregard for the law has not been limited to the Biden Administration. After the Biden ATF\u2019s inadvertent disclosure of Tiahrt-protected trace data to GOA, the DOJ under Pam Bondi re-released that same data\u2014possibly purposely\u2014to make moot GOA\u2019s ongoing litigation against the ATF gag order.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rather than protecting the public by preventing sensitive firearms trace data from falling into the wrong hands, ATF has defied both the letter and spirit of the law.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
ATF\u2019s approach to Tiahrt can serve as a window into the agency\u2019s successes\u2014and failures\u2014upholding the Second Amendment and ensuring protections on sensitive law enforcement data more broadly.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Biden Administration, in particular, took a variety of troubling actions in this regard. Under President Biden,\u00a0ATF\u2019s \u201czero tolerance\u201d enforcement policy\u2014which threatened to close firearm businesses over even small, nonmaterial paperwork and clerical errors\u2014increased reliance on inspection records and compliance data to revoke firearms licenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
ATF\u2019s 2022 \u201cghost gun\u201d rule imposed new sweeping recordkeeping and background-check requirements to previously unregulated products, with the purpose of trying to harm the firearms industry and suppress the exercise of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Furthermore, Biden-era regulatory changes and enforcement guidance expanded who is considered \u201cengaged in the business\u201d of dealing firearms, potentially implicating unsuspecting everyday Americans as federally regulated gun dealers and subjecting them to severe penalties for noncompliance.<\/p>\n
I have faith that the current administration will continue to roll back the Biden ATF\u2019s most destructive regulations.\u00a0\u00a0A recently announced batch of ATF proposed rulemakings seek to do just that.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, ATF\u2019s improper treatment of Tiahrt-protected data demonstrates that rigorous, ongoing congressional oversight of the agency is necessary, regardless of which party controls the White House.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thank you, Director Cekada, for joining us today to discuss this crucial subject along with other Second Amendment issues.\u00a0\u00a0I look forward to today\u2019s hearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON\u2014Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement Chairman Clay Higgins (R-La.) delivered opening remarks at today\u2019s hearing on \u201cPrivacy Protections…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":642872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-642871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=642871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/642871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/642872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=642871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=642871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=642871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}