N.C. congressmen back bill blocking Biden from tracking gun ownership | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the Carolina Journal. The author of this post is CJ Staff.

    Four Republican members of North Carolina's U.S. House delegation have signed on as co-sponsors of a bill limiting the Biden administration's ability to track gun ownership.

    Reps. Dan Bishop of the 9th District, Ted Budd (13th), Madison Cawthorn (11th), and Richard Hudson (8th) are co-sponsoring H.R. 6945, also known as the No REGISTRY Rights Act. The measure has more than 40 co-sponsors. All are Republicans.

    Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, serves as the bill's lead sponsor. The bill "would stop the Biden administration from stockpiling records on American gun owners by altering federal law to allow firearm dealers to destroy sales records," according to a March 8 report in the Washington Free Beacon.

    The bill "is a response to the Free Beacon's January report detailing how the Biden administration's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has amassed nearly 1 billion records detailing American citizens' firearm purchases, a figure that is far higher than Congress and the public has been aware of," according to the article.

    Introduced Monday in the U.S. House, the legislation aims "To amend title 18, United States Code, to discontinue the collection by the Federal Government of firearm transaction records of discontinued firearms businesses, to require the destruction of such already collected records, and for other purposes," according to the official bill title.

    The legislation responds to Biden administration proposals. Current law requires a licensed gun dealer going out of business to turn over its past 20 years of records to the ATF. The bureau then enters those records into a federal database. The administration wants to eliminate the 20-year limitation. All records would go to the federal government.

    In contrast, H.R. 6945 would force ATF to delete existing records of firearms transactions. It would allow licensed gun dealers to destroy all records when going out of business.

    ATF maintains a database of more than 920 million firearm purchase records.

    House leaders have referred the bill to the Judiciary Committee.