Defend the Tiahrt Amendment

"Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent. "

This is taken verbatim (bold added) from the Change.gov website, and seriously misinforms about the Tiahrt amendment, which in no way limits police officers and other legitimate law enforcement uses of the BATFE database. The Tiahrt amendment prohibits illegitimate misuse of the database, and is fully supported by all major law enforcement organizations and the BATFE. The mayors of cities such as Chicago, New York and Washington, DC want access so as to enable filing of fraudulent and destructive lawsuits against manufacturers and dealers, and future gun confiscation schemes.

Tiahrt acknowledges there are ways to improve the Tiahrt Amendment to make some provisions more clear. However, it is false to claim that law enforcement does not have access to gun trace data, even from other jurisdictions. Local law enforcement agencies are allowed to share the data from their jurisdictions with any other entity they choose. Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment means anyone can receive the names of investigators, targeted gun dealers and other specific information related to criminal investigations. There is at least one website that exposes police informants. Tiahrt is concerned the mayors are now opening up the possibility of new websites exposing undercover agents as well. “I have reached out to New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and others to try to reach compromise on some of the Tiahrt Amendment provisions. However, the current version of the Tiahrt Amendment, which protects law enforcement officers and their investigations, is better than repeal that results in total public access to data that could help criminals and end up killing cops,” Tiahrt said, June 12, 2007.

I urge everyone to become familiar with this important law and be prepared to fight Obama and Biden on this issue, as well as on the assault weapons ban.