Kim's New Bill Would Torch the Last Wall Against a Gun Registry

Sen. Andy Kim (D-NJ) introduced legislation this week to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment — the single most important federal firewall protecting your gun purchase and trace records from becoming a permanent, searchable federal database.

Let that sink in. The Tiahrt Amendment, in place since 2003, prohibits the ATF from releasing firearm trace data to the public and requires that gun purchase records be destroyed within 24 hours after a background check clears. Kim's bill would rip out both protections.

Without Tiahrt, the federal government retains every background check record indefinitely. Every gun you've legally bought — make, model, serial number, your name — sitting in a federal database. That's not speculation. That's the direct, logical consequence of what Kim filed.

Kim frames this as a public safety measure — the same PR language anti-gun groups have recycled for 20 years to justify every incremental step toward civilian disarmament. Don't buy the packaging. What he's actually building is the infrastructure for a national gun registry, which Congress explicitly banned in 1986.

The Tiahrt Amendment exists because law enforcement and gun dealers fought hard for it. The ATF's own trace data was being weaponized by anti-gun litigators to sue gun manufacturers into bankruptcy — a legal strategy Bloomberg-backed groups ran until Congress shut the door. Kim wants that door back open.

This isn't a think-piece or a press-conference trial balloon. Kim formally introduced the bill in the Senate. It gets a bill number. It gets referred to committee. And it becomes a vehicle — one that anti-gun senators can attach to must-pass legislation the moment they find their opening.

Kim flipped Bob Menendez's New Jersey Senate seat in 2024 after Menendez's federal corruption conviction. He campaigned as a moderate. This bill is not moderate. This is a coordinated push — expect a companion bill in the House and Bloomberg money amplifying the messaging within weeks.

**What you need to do right now:** Call your senators — especially any Republican who has been wobbly on gun issues — and tell them the Tiahrt Amendment is non-negotiable. Any vote for cloture, any vote to advance Kim's bill or a companion measure, is a vote for a federal gun registry. Name it. Call it what it is. Make sure they know you're watching.