From the Brady Campaign website:
http://www.bradycampaign.org/legislation/gunlobbybacked/TiahrtPOSITION: The Brady Campaign supports the repeal of the Tiahrt (TEE-art) Amendment that hides from the public valuable crime gun information and hinders law enforcement.
PROBLEM: The Tiahrt Amendment severely limits the authority of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to disclose crime gun trace data to the public. It also codifies the Bush Administration policy to destroy certain criminal background check records after only 24 hours. Finally, it bars the ATF from implementing its proposed regulation requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventory audits to address the problem of guns “disappearing” from gun shops with no record of sales.
THREAT: The Tiahrt Amendment hides from
researchers, press, politicians and the public valuable information on crime guns that has been used to identify the sources of illegal guns, as well as to establish the effectiveness of policies to prevent illegal guns. The Tiahrt Amendment makes law enforcement’s job more difficult by requiring background checks to be destroyed in 24 hours and by barring annual inventory audits by gun shops.
URGENCY: Having effective policies to prevent illegal gun trafficking makes our families and communities safer. Repealing the Tiahrt Amendment would untie the hands of law enforcement, as well as give the public vital information needed to craft the most effective policies against illegal guns.
SOLUTION: Congress should repeal the Tiahrt Amendment as soon as possible.
GET ACTIVE: Contact your Representative and Senators to urge them repeal the Tiahrt Amendment.
What they don't make clear is that the checks required to be destroyed after 24 hours were those of
people with clean records who passed the check, and the original law creating the instant check system
required that such records be destroyed on privacy grounds (part of the compromise that created the check system in the first place); the law was being blithely ignored, so this put teeth in it. The Brady Campaign wants those kept as sort of a
de facto registration system, so that data can be mined months or years later at whim. Data on people who fail the check are retained forever, AFAIK.
The law does not restrict police or the BATFE from conducting investigations; it prevents arbitrary release of the data for purposes other than criminal investigation. In an ideal world, that wouldn't be necessary, and it's not a huge deal, but the enforcement of the privacy provision
is a big deal, and I suspect that's what really has the Brady Campaign up in arms, so to speak.
Here's the NRA's take on it, but I thought you'd probably give more credence to the Brady Campaign:
http://www.nraila.org/Issues/FactSheets/Read.aspx?id=208Fact-check what they say. I don't see anything in there that's incorrect. I do know that the MAIG press release on the topic is pure BS.
Here's the actual text of the law, from what I can find:
(N)o 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
Looks like it's mostly focused on stopping the misuse of the data in junk lawsuits, although that concern was address somewhat by the restrictions on same that Congress passed a few years ago. Like I said, to me the biggest issue is requiring the privacy provisions of the NICS law to be enforced, which prior to Tiahrt were routinely ignored.
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