Snopes Takes on Claims that Bondi Is Creating Registry of Gun Owners

The website Snopes has a reputation, at least among conservatives, for skewing liberal, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at some of its gun-relate coverage in recent months. Last year, for example, it covered Kamala Harris’ boast while serving as San Francisco D.A. that law enforcement would go into people’s homes to check and see if gun owners were storing firearms in accordance with local ordinances. 

Snopes also claimed, however, that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz’s demands for a ban on “assault weapons” wasn’t really a “gun ban”, since they weren’t calling for a ban on all firearms. That’s a ridiculous take, in my opinion. An “assault weapon” ban is a gun ban, even if it’s not a total prohibition on all gun owenrship. 

So, when I saw that Snopes decided to delve into claims that Attorney Genearl Pam Bondi is creating a registry of gun owners, I was curious to see how the website would cover the issue. 

In all honesty, I think it did a pretty good job. Snopes delves pretty deeply into Judge Robert Summerhays’ ruling in Reese v. ATF and does a good job of explaining that it was the judge, not DOJ, who demanded the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation, and Louisiana Shooting Association provide the government with a list of each of its members who would be impacted by the injunction. 

Summerhays initially asked member organizations to submit membership lists because of the limited scope of his ruling. 

The judge’s Oct. 7 judgment applied only to “(a) Caleb Reese, Joseph Granich, Emily Naquin, and (b) individuals and federally licensed firearms importers, manufacturers, dealers or collectors who were members of Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Second Amendment Foundation, or Louisiana Shooting Association at the time this action was filed on November 6, 2020.” 

Reese, Granich and Naquin were named plaintiffs who were 18 to 20 years old at the time of the lawsuit and so could not legally purchase handguns or handgun ammunition. 

Summerhays also placed a geographical limitation on the ruling, writing that it applied to the above people “within the jurisdictional boundaries of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (i.e., Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas).”

Given the limited scope of the judgment, Summerhays wrote, “Within twenty-one (21) days of issuance of this Judgment, those Plaintiffs identified at paragraph 2(b) shall provide to Defendants a verified list of their members as of November 6, 2020.” Paragraph 2(b) named the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation and Louisiana Shooting Association.

Now, Snopes doesn’t get into the fact that while DOJ didn’t ask or demand these groups turn over a list of its members, it did ask the judge to grant relief only to those individuals “who were members of Plaintiffs Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Second Amendment Foundation, or Louisiana Shooting Association at the time this action was filed on November 6, 2020, and have been identified and verified by respective Plaintiff organizations during the course of this litigation.”

That’s still not a national gun registry, but it pretty clearly would limit relief to a handful of individuals even though the Fifth Circuit has found the law unconstitutional; a decision the DOJ decided not to appeal. 

Snopes incorrectly describes the member lists that Summerhays ordered the groups to turn over to DOJ as “outdated member information”, though. Summerhays told the groups to provide their membership lists as of November 6, 2020, which is when Reese was filed, but only those members who are still active (and still between the ages of 18 and 20) today would be granted relief by the terms of his injunction. 

Still, when Snopes declares it “found no evidence that Bondi or the DOJ were creating a registry of gun owners,” that’s because there is no such registry being created. There are legitimate complaints to be made about the DOJ’s stance on many 2A cases dealing with federal gun control laws, but thankfully a national registry of gun owners isn’t one of them. 

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

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