The truth that @ATFHQ is utilizing facial recognition to establish gun house owners is UNACCEPTABLE.
Thanks, @RepAndyBiggsAZ, for preventing to guard the privateness of law-abiding gun house owners by taking motion on this GOA-breaking report & bringing it to Kash Patel.pic.twitter.com/wPahwbIgWy https://t.co/nIoB6XNMUa
— Gun Homeowners of America (@GunOwners) March 28, 2025
Gun house owners throughout America have each motive to be outraged. In accordance with a March 27, 2025, letter from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been secretly utilizing facial recognition expertise to trace and establish gun house owners—all with out enough oversight, transparency, and even fundamental coaching for brokers.
Biggs, who chairs the Home Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Authorities Surveillance, is now demanding that Performing ATF Director Kash Patel hand over all paperwork referring to the company’s use of facial recognition software program. The decision for solutions follows a number of bombshell Authorities Accountability Workplace (GAO) reviews and revelations that the ATF carried out not less than 549 facial recognition searches between 2019 and 2022, typically on law-abiding Individuals exercising their Second Modification rights.
“The Subcommittee has issues about ATF’s use of facial recognition and AI packages and the consequences that its use has upon Americans’ Second Modification rights and rights to privateness,” Biggs wrote.
A Sample of Overreach
This newest scandal provides to a rising record of examples proving that the federal authorities merely can’t be trusted with gun proprietor information. As AmmoLand Information beforehand reported, the ATF has flirted with or outright pursued unconstitutional surveillance for years—compiling digitized firearm transaction data and sustaining practically 1 billion data at its Nationwide Tracing Heart.
The usage of facial recognition, powered by business platforms like Clearview AI and Vigilant Options, is the most recent software within the ATF’s surveillance arsenal. These methods permit brokers to run an individual’s face towards databases scraped from social media and public pictures—typically with no warrant, a court docket order, or perhaps a written coverage on privateness.
A GAO report from June 2021 warned that ATF had no coaching protocols and no safeguards in place when utilizing the expertise. In some circumstances, ATF officers didn’t even know that brokers have been sending pictures to non-public business companies. As of April 2023, ATF claimed it had stopped utilizing these instruments—however additional investigation reveals they’ve merely outsourced the searches to state and native companions as an alternative.
Related to Trump Assassination Try
Issues got here to a head after the July 13, 2024, tried assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Senator Ron Johnson revealed that ATF acquired and used facial pictures of shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks in the course of the investigation—regardless of the company claiming it had halted facial recognition use months earlier.
This contradiction has renewed calls from gun rights advocates to strip ATF of biometric surveillance powers utterly. Critics are actually warning that if the ATF can use this expertise on a presidential murderer, it might apply it to any American it doesn’t like—together with anybody who buys a gun, posts on-line about their rights, or dares to oppose the federal government’s gun management agenda.
A Registry in Disguise?
For years, Second Modification defenders have warned that the ATF is quietly constructing a nationwide gun registry. Now, with entry to AI-powered facial recognition, the company could not even want your title—they’ll discover you by your face.
A GOA spokesman has warned up to now that facial recognition mixed with ATF firearm data might quantity to “a nationwide gun registry by one other title”—a path that results in firearm confiscation.
With Congress debating funding for “Regulation Enforcement Superior Analytics,” there’s rising concern that taxpayer {dollars} might be funneled into increasing the surveillance state—this time focusing on peaceable gun house owners.
Biggs’ Calls for
Chairman Biggs’ letter to the ATF is a direct response to the company’s abuses. He’s demanding:
All inside and exterior communications between the ATF and facial recognition suppliers
All contracts, funds, and agreements associated to biometric surveillance
All emails, memos, and directions from ATF management concerning use of the expertise
This investigation might blow the lid off some of the critical privateness violations in latest reminiscence.
Sufficient is Sufficient.
The federal authorities has already proven it might’t safe its personal information. It leaked a terrorist watchlist, failed to guard tax data, and even misplaced delicate biometric data in Afghanistan. Now they need gun proprietor information, and so they wish to establish us by our faces?
The Second Modification isn’t slightly below assault in courtrooms and legislatures—it’s being chipped away in secret, behind the glow of surveillance screens. Gun house owners should demand Congress put a cease to this overreach earlier than it’s too late.
TAKE ACTION: Contact your Consultant and inform them to assist Chairman Biggs’ investigation. Inform them no funding ought to go to facial recognition packages that threaten your gun rights.
Stick with AmmoLand Information as we proceed exposing authorities overreach and preventing in your freedom.
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