Tiahrt Amendment, explained

Article explaining the Tiahrt Amendment, for those unfamiliar with one of the anti-gunners' favorite targets:

There is a lot of talk about the Tiahrt Amendment and the fact that the gun grabbers want to have the amendment repealed. But what exactly is this amendment?

Last month, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence sent their proposals for reducing gun violence to the Obama administration. The number one item on the list was repealing the Tiahrt Amendment, which they say...

...severely limits the authority of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives ("ATF") to disclose crime gun trace data to the public under the Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA"), bars admissibility of such data in civil suits against the gun industry, and restricts disclosure of the data to law enforcement.

The first two claims are true, the third a flat out lie. This is the relevant text:

That no funds appropriated under this or any other Act with respect to any fiscal year may be used to disclose part or all of the contents of the Firearms Trace System database maintained by the National Trace Center of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives or any information required to be kept by licensees pursuant to section 923(g) of title 18, United States Code, or required to be reported pursuant to paragraphs (3) and (7) of such section 923(g), to anyone other than a Federal, State, or local law enforcement agency or a prosecutor solely in connection with and for use in a bona fide criminal investigation or prosecution and then only such information as pertains to the geographic jurisdiction of the law enforcement agency requesting the disclosure and not for use in any civil action or proceeding other than an action or proceeding commenced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or a review of such an action or proceeding, to enforce the provisions of chapter 44 of such title, and all such data shall be immune from legal process and shall not be subject to subpoena or other discovery, shall be inadmissible in evidence, and shall not be used, relied on, or disclosed in any manner, nor shall testimony or other evidence be permitted based upon such data, in any civil action pending on or filed after the effective date of this Act in any State (including the District of Columbia) or Federal court or in any administrative proceeding other than a proceeding commenced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to enforce the provisions of that chapter, or a review of such an action or proceeding

The data in the Firearms Trace System database is clearly available to law enforcement. In fact, that was what it was created for.

What it is not for is to let anti-gun politicians use this information for their own agendas. The trace data is only useful in direct conjunction with a criminal investigation. Any other use would not yield viable results because of the nature of the data. For example, a trace might be run on a firearm that had nothing to do with a crime, such as to verify a firearm isn't stolen. This would yield a false positive if attempting to use the data out of context on a witch hunt to try to find problems that don't exist.

Hurting the gun grabbers' argument even further is that both the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Fraternal Order of Police want the data to remain restricted to law enforcement. Their primary concerns are that it would jeopardize ongoing investigations and put undercover officers at risk.

Article here.