Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act of 2025
Key claim: This bill would require ATF’s National Tracing Center to build and keep an electronic, searchable database of certain firearms transaction records.
Abstract
(S3289 · 119th Congress) Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act of 2025 This bill requires the National Tracing Center within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to establish and maintain an electronic, searchable database of records related to certain firearms transactions. Latest action (2025-12-01): Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Why this matters
ATF has long been statutorily constrained from maintaining a centralized, searchable firearms registry, and crime-gun traces are performed largely through paper or image-based records. A bill digitizing the National Tracing Center’s holdings would substantially change the speed and scope of law-enforcement tracing while reopening longstanding contested questions about firearm-owner privacy and the statutory bar on a federal gun registry.