Gun Control Group Sues ATF Over Refusal to Release Crime Gun Seller Data

A major gun control group is suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Justice Department over the federal agencies' refusals to release documents and other information about who the largest sellers of crime guns in the U.S. are.

Brady is demanding in its lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia this morning that the court compel the ATF to release information related to what the agency calls Demand Letter 2s. These are letters ATF sends to gun dealers and other sellers that have been identified as selling at least 25 or more guns recovered at crime scenes in a calendar year.

"This is information that will save lives. It is information that helps us be able to analyze how our government is regulating the gun industry, particularly the largest sellers of crime guns, and it's information that we need to improve public safety in this country," said Josh Scharff, Brady's general counsel and senior director of programs.

Democracy Forward, a legal group that has sued the Trump administration over several policies and actions, is representing Brady in this case.

Brady says in its lawsuit that the organization submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request in February asking the ATF to hand over all DL2s issued by the agency to federal firearms licensees. Brady wants these letters issued during 2017 to 2021 and 2025. The ATF said it was withholding the requested letters, saying releasing this information would inadvertently disclose personal information, confidential trade secrets, commercial or financial details and could constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.

Brady has collected this information from the ATF before and has used the information to compile it into tracking databases and reports it posts on its website.

Just last year the ATF paused the DL2 program after gun rights groups long criticized its existence.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a national trade association for the firearms industry that announced the break in the program back in June, said DL2 letters were just used to "'name-and-shame' firearm retailers for crimes in which they had no involvement."

ATF Director Robert Cekada wrote to Congress during his confirmation process that he supported the program's pause. He wrote, "This pause, triggered, in part, by efforts of advocacy groups to mischaracterize the Demand Letter program and evade … disclosure restrictions on firearm related data. This pause is allowing ATF to evaluate the program effectiveness from reporting mandates to tracing results."

ATF used this information from the letters to trace more than 190,000 firearms between 2000 to 2021.

This all comes as Cekada and other leaders at DOJ tout the Trump administration as the most Second Amendment-friendly presidency in years.

Cekada and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche have publicly embraced the gun industry and have said the agencies will work to ease burdens for sellers, manufacturers and gun owners.

The ATF recently rolled out more than 30 proposed changes aimed at cutting red tape for these stakeholders. Cekada has said of those changes, "ATF's mission is to protect public safety and enforce the law – and these reforms reflect our commitment to doing that through regulations that are clear, legally sound, and narrowly tailored to that purpose."

Brady and other gun control groups say these actions taken as a whole threaten public safety.

Brady's Scharff said, "ATF's decision to withhold these documents really can't be taken out of that narrative. It's impossible for us to ignore that this administration is doing everything that it can to cater to the gun industry and we believe that this is part of that pattern."