Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is suing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives over the Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits local officials from accessing ATF firearms trace databases, according to a CNN report.
Scott and the Baltimore City Council argue they cannot curb firearms resulting in gun violence from entering the city if they cannot figure out where they came from.
“When you’re dealing with an issue as complicated as gun violence, you need every single tool at your disposal, and as long as we don’t have access to this information, we won’t have every tool,” Scott said.
The Tiahrt Amendment was enacted in 2003 as a way for law enforcement and prosecutors to get gun tracing data, but they aren’t allowed to share that data. The lawsuit said the ATF has adopted too narrow of an interpretation of the Tiahrt Amendment and
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