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

April 28. Put it on the wall.

The House Oversight Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement has scheduled a hearing to examine how the ATF operates under the Tiahrt Amendment — and this is not routine oversight. It is a procedural opening, and the anti-gun lobby has been waiting two decades for exactly this moment.

**The Tiahrt Amendment is the only thing standing between you and a permanent federal gun registry.** It blocks the ATF from releasing firearms trace data to the public, bars the agency from forcing dealers to submit to inventory audits, and requires that NICS background-check records be destroyed within 24 hours. Three walls. Gun owners have held them since 2003.

Now all three are on the table at once.

Rep. Madeleine Dean introduced the Gun Records Restoration and Preservation Act in June 2025 — a single bill engineered to demolish every core Tiahrt protection in one stroke. That legislation is the ghost in the room when the gavel drops on April 28. The subcommittee doesn't have to pass anything that day. They just have to make Tiahrt look *arguable*. That's the play.

Here is how the framing works, because you will hear it: Dean and her allies will call this a law-enforcement necessity. They will say trace data saves lives. They will say inventory audits close loopholes. Every word of it is a wrapper around the same product — a permanent, searchable federal database of every firearm purchase in America. "Crime gun tracing" is the pitch. A national gun registry is what gets built.

Yes, the subcommittee carries a Republican majority. That is the only good news in this story, and it is not good enough to sit on your hands. A formal hearing puts Tiahrt's legitimacy on the record for debate. That's the procedural foothold. Build enough hearings, enough record, enough "reasonable concern" — and repeal momentum assembles itself. The gun-control lobby has been running this exact playbook for twenty years. They are patient. They can afford to be.

**You cannot afford to let April 28 pass in silence.**

Contact your House representative before that hearing opens. Tell them Tiahrt stays intact — no compromises, no amendments, no "modernization." The number is at house.gov. The call takes three minutes. The registry they're building would last forever.

Watch this space: whatever testimony drops in that hearing room on April 28 will shape the next push to strip Tiahrt entirely. We'll have the breakdown the moment it happens.