April 28: They're Putting Your Gun Privacy on Trial

Circle it in red. The House Oversight Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement holds a targeted hearing on the ATF and the Tiahrt Amendment — the appropriations riders that have blocked a permanent federal gun registry for over two decades.

And this time, they brought a bill.

Rep. Madeleine Dean introduced the **Gun Records Restoration and Preservation Act** in June 2025. The name is a masterclass in Orwellian branding. "Restoration and preservation" means restoring the ATF's power to build a searchable database of your gun purchases — and locking it in permanently. That is a registry. Full stop.

Here's what Dean's bill actually does: it tears open firearms trace data to the public and to anti-gun litigants looking to sue the industry into oblivion. It kills the 24-hour NICS record destruction requirement — meaning your background check data stops disappearing and starts accumulating. And it hands the ATF authority to demand inventory audits of every federally licensed dealer in the country.

**They don't want to regulate your guns. They want to map them.**

The Republican-led subcommittee should be a friendly room for Tiahrt defenders. But don't get comfortable. The hearing itself is the weapon — it gives gun-control groups a national megaphone, a C-SPAN timestamp, and a fundraising moment they'll milk for months. Dean and her backers are betting that with the ATF's institutional footing already shaky, this is the window to strip these privacy protections while gun owners are looking elsewhere.

It's a calculated gamble. **Don't let them win it.**

The Tiahrt Amendment has beaten back every repeal attempt since 2003 — because every single time, gun owners showed up louder than the opposition. Letters flooded in. Phones rang. Votes held. That machine has to fire again, right now, before April 28 becomes a turning point they get to brag about.

You have days, not weeks. Contact your House representative and make it simple: the Tiahrt Amendment is non-negotiable. Find your rep at house.gov.

Watch this hearing closely. The way this subcommittee handles Dean's bill on April 28 will tell you exactly how hard the next fight is going to be — and the fight after that is already being planned.