April 28: Congress Puts the Last Wall Against a Gun Registry on Trial

The House Oversight Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement has set a formal hearing for April 28 to put the Tiahrt Amendment and ATF's firearms-tracing authority directly on the congressional record. The Republican-led panel is making its move. The gun-grabber lobby is already circling the date on its calendar.

The Tiahrt Amendment isn't a technicality. It's the wall.

Attached to Justice Department appropriations every year since 2003, it bars ATF from forcing dealers into inventory audits, locks down who can access firearms-tracing data, and mandates that NICS background-check records be destroyed within 24 hours of an approval. Every one of those provisions exists because without them, ATF builds a registry — slowly, quietly, and just outside what the law explicitly forbids.

**That's not paranoia. That's the documented history of this agency.**

Now Democrats want to tear all three protections out at once. Rep. Madeleine Dean's so-called "Gun Records Restoration and Preservation Act" — introduced in the 119th Congress in June 2025 — would gut every pillar of the Tiahrt framework. The name is a deliberate lie. What the bill actually restores is ATF's ability to construct the very registry Congress has repeatedly told it not to build.

The timing is not an accident.

ATF's institutional standing is already shaky heading into this hearing. A weakened agency, a Democrat-backed repeal bill, and a single congressional hearing converging on the same moment — that is a two-front assault, and gun owners cannot afford to treat it like background noise.

This is the pressure point. April 28 is the date.

**Contact your House rep before that hearing opens. Tell them the Tiahrt Amendment stays intact — no registry, no inventory mandates, no exceptions, no compromises dressed up as "preservation."**

If this amendment falls, there is no quiet backup plan. There is no next wall. Watch this hearing like your rights depend on it — because they do. And watch what WTF News reports when lawmakers go on the record.