They're Coming for Tiahrt—April 28 Is the Day

The House Oversight Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement convenes a dedicated hearing on the Tiahrt Amendment — and the bill designed to kill it is already sitting in committee, warmed up and ready for its televised debut.

Rep. Madeleine Dean's Gun Records Restoration and Preservation Act, introduced in the 119th Congress, would strip every Tiahrt protection in a single stroke: gone are the blocks on ATF building a de facto national gun registry, gone is the prohibition on mandatory dealer inventory audits, gone is the requirement that NICS background-check records be destroyed within 24 hours of a cleared transaction.

**All of it. One bill. One hearing. One agenda.**

Let's be precise about what Tiahrt actually does for you. It keeps your lawful gun purchase off a centralized, shareable federal database. It stops ATF bureaucrats from walking into a gun dealer and demanding an inventory count on command. It prevents Washington from warehousing the paper trail of your background check indefinitely. These are not loopholes or technicalities — they are hard-won statutory firewalls against a registry that Congress has never been able to pass through the front door.

So the gun-control lobby is trying the side door.

Their public line is that Tiahrt "shields illegal trafficking." Don't take the bait. Law enforcement already has legal channels to trace crime guns through individual dealer records — and those channels stay open under Tiahrt. What anti-gun forces actually want is centralized, searchable, shareable data on every lawful transaction by every law-abiding gun owner in America. A registry in everything but name. A registry they cannot get through direct legislation, so they are working to dismantle the appropriations riders that block it.

The subcommittee is Republican-led — that's the only reason Monday's hearing is a hearing and not already a repeal vote. But do not mistake a controlled room for a safe room. Anti-gun forces will use every minute of testimony to build a legislative and media record for the next Congress that may not be so friendly.

**Watch the witness list like a hawk.** Watch who gets softball questions and who gets hostile ones. Watch whether "gun violence prevention" advocates show up dressed as neutral law enforcement experts. They will not be neutral. They never are.

The institutional pressure on ATF right now, combined with Dean's bill sitting ready in committee, means the groundwork is being laid in public — in front of cameras — for a future move that could be much harder to stop.

**Your move is simple and it has a deadline.** Contact your House representative before April 28. Tell them Tiahrt stays — all of it, every rider, no compromises. Find your rep in sixty seconds at house.gov.

Because the other side already knows what day it is. The question is whether you do.