Comment on FR Doc # 2026-09158

RE: RIN 1140–AA94, Docket No. ATF–2026–0002P — Firearms Electronic Record-Keeping I am writing to strongly oppose this proposed rule authorizing electronic record keeping systems for federal firearms licensees. While ATF frames this proposal as a modernization and cost saving measure, the practical effect is to formalize the infrastructure for a national firearms registry, something Congress has expressly and repeatedly prohibited. The Firearm Owners' Protection Act of 1986 amended 18 U.S.C. 926(a) to state clearly that no regulation prescribed after the effective date of that Act may require that records maintained under the Gun Control Act be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States government. Congress has renewed this prohibition annually since 1979 through appropriations riders barring ATF from consolidating or centralizing licensee records into any searchable federal database. This proposed rule does not technically transfer records to ATF custody, but it moves the entire industry toward a uniform, centralized, cloud accessible, and permanently retrievable format that makes the eventual creation of a de facto registry a matter of policy choice rather than technical possibility. Once every FFL's acquisition and disposition records and every Form 4473 exist as standardized, searchable, sortable electronic files stored on servers ATF can inspect on demand, the substance of the statutory prohibition has been defeated even if the letter is preserved. The proposed searchability requirements in section 478.130(a)(5) are particularly troubling. Requiring that records be searchable by transferee name, serial number, and other identifying fields converts what was once a scattered, paper based, practically decentralized system into precisely the kind of instantly queryable database the 1986 Act was written to prevent. The fact that this searchability exists at the licensee level rather than at ATF headquarters is a distinction without a difference once ATF has statutory access to every licensee's system during compliance inspections. A registry does not need to sit on a government server to function as a registry. It only needs to be uniform, centralized in practice, and accessible to the government on request. This rule creates exactly that condition industry wide. I am also concerned about the remote and third party hosting provisions in section 478.130(d)(2). Permitting licensee records to be stored with cloud storage providers or host facilities, even domestic ones subject to U.S. legal process, multiplies the points of potential access, breach, and compelled disclosure. A gun owner's transaction history should not be sitting on a third party server where it can be reached through subpoena, hacked, or acquired through a change of corporate ownership. Paper records dispersed across thousands of independent small businesses have historically served as a practical, if imperfect, bulwark against exactly this kind of centralization. This rule removes that bulwark under the banner of convenience. ATF's own economic analysis concedes that this rule imposes no new costs and exists primarily to codify practices already underway informally. That is itself a reason for the agency to pause rather than proceed. If the substantial expansion of electronic, searchable, centrally structured firearm transaction records is not judged to warrant even a formal cost benefit analysis, then ATF has not seriously grappled with the Second Amendment and privacy implications of what it is authorizing. A change of this magnitude to how tens of millions of firearms transactions are recorded and retained deserves more than a certification that it will not significantly affect small entities. I request that ATF withdraw this proposed rule, or at minimum add explicit and enforceable safeguards providing that no licensee's electronic records, regardless of format or searchability, may be aggregated, indexed, or cross referenced by ATF or any other federal agency in a manner that would allow identification of firearm owners by name, address, or other personal identifier across multiple licensees. Absent such safeguards, this rule moves the country closer to the centralized firearms registry that Congress has forbidden for nearly fifty years. Thank you for considering this comment.