One of the go-to measures that "moderate" gun control activists press to try to jam the camel's nose under the tent flap is "universal background checks" - making everyone, supposedly, take a background check before buying a gun. Anywhere. From anyone. Any time.
Second Amendment activists oppose this for two major reasons.
First: the same criminals that aren't taking background checks now when buying a stolen Glock from another criminal to go out and commit more crimes, aren't magically going to start taking them when they're "Universal". The word isn't that powerful.
The second reason? The only way for the government to tell if a background check is "universal" for any particular firearm, or if the person with the gun didn't take one of the background checks, is if there is a paper trail for that firearm going all the way back to the manufacturer.
Which means the various background checks - let's call them "data points" - for that firearm, and every other firearm, need to be stored somewhere.
And the technical term for "organized collection of data points" is "database". And the technical term for keeping a database of firearms, their background checks and thus their legal owners is a "registry".
tl:DR version: "Universal" background checks can not work without becoming a gun registry, essentially giving the goverment a good idea who owns every legal firearm (there's that distinction again) in the country.
And by accident or design, President Trump's federal Artificial Intelligence (AI) initiative may be backing us toard the registry we've been warning you about.
The Trump administration’s sweeping artificial-intelligence policy aims to ensure that a U.S.-led technology stack is used at home and abroad, according to the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios.
Speaking Wednesday morning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Kratsios said the three executive orders on AI policy signed by President Donald Trump last week support the aims of leading in AI innovation, developing infrastructure, and supporting technology exports.
“We have to have the most dominant technological stack in the world, and that's critically important for our national economic security,” he said.
Winning the AI race is a solid, arguably essential goal.
But there's an unintended consequence to this; the existing background checks for firearms genarate a lot of data. And data is what AI digests to create the illusion of sentience.
Every time a gun owner buys a handgun or "modern sporting rifle" at a licensed gun dealer (or anywhere, in a state with "Universal Background Checks"), they fill out a Form 4473, the request for a background checks. They're supposed to be kept at the gun dealer and never released to the Feds.
Unless the store goes out of business before the retention period for the forms passes. And that's where the ATF steps in:
According to FOIA responses and internal ATF memos, the Bureau receives millions of out-of-business dealer records every month. These records include sensitive data from ATF Form 4473s—name, address, firearm description, and more. Although ATF claims that this information can’t be searched by name, it’s only because that feature is “disabled”—not deleted. With just a few keystrokes, ATF could turn this passive database into an active weapon against gun owners.
And when we say "when the store goes out of business", that's presuming the ATF bothers waiting around for that:
Gun Owners of America (GOA) has gone further, exposing that the ATF has encouraged active FFLs to submit current records voluntarily, even before closing shop, expanding this illegal registry far beyond its already bloated scope.
Now, one of the stated aims of the President's executive order on the subject is to avoid "woke AI" - and gun control was "woke" before white progressives appropriated the term.
But nobody carved out gun registrations from the tsunami of 4473 forms that the Feds are going to be digitizing:
Nowhere in the policy is there a guarantee that firearms ownership data will be excluded from AI ingestion. No safeguard. No carve-out. Just blind faith that bureaucrats will do the “right thing” with mountains of sensitive information—despite decades of evidence to the contrary.
If firearm transaction records become part of these national AI systems, what’s to stop future administrations—or even foreign actors who compromise the system—from querying this data to locate, target, or harass law-abiding gun owners?
You might ask what evidence there is that the government would want to create such a database. You'd be told that putting that statement in the future tense is sooooo cute.
There is an ongoing effort by Second Amendment groups to prevent this:
In January 2025, Congressman Michael Cloud and Senator Jim Risch reintroduced the No REGISTRY Rights Act, a direct response to the ATF’s illegal stockpiling of gun owner data. The bill would dismantle the ATF’s Out-of-Business Records Imaging System (OBRIS), which currently holds over 920 million firearm transaction records, many of them digitized and indexed for rapid retrieval. Cloud’s investigation into this system, along with a damning report by Gun Owners of America, revealed how easily this database could be misused to build a door-to-door gun confiscation list.
The wall between all of that data and the Feds needs to be just as impermeable as a wall on the border.
