ATF facial recognition: Chairman Andy Biggs seeks records as gun owners sound alarm

Gun owners across America have every reason to be outraged. According to a March 27, 2025, letter from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been secretly using facial recognition technology to track and identify gun owners—all without sufficient oversight, transparency, or even basic training for agents.

Biggs, who chairs the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, is now demanding that Acting ATF Director Kash Patel hand over all documents relating to the agency’s use of facial recognition software. The call for answers follows multiple bombshell Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports and revelations that the ATF conducted at least 549 facial recognition searches between 2019 and 2022, often on law-abiding Americans exercising their Second Amendment rights.

“The Subcommittee has concerns about ATF’s use of facial recognition and AI programs and the effects that its use has upon American citizens’ Second Amendment rights and rights to privacy,” Biggs wrote.

A Pattern of Overreach

This latest scandal adds to a growing list of examples proving that the federal government simply cannot be trusted with gun owner data. As AmmoLand News previously reported, the ATF has flirted with or outright pursued unconstitutional surveillance for years—compiling digitized firearm transaction records and maintaining nearly 1 billion records at its National Tracing Center.

The use of facial recognition, powered by commercial platforms like Clearview AI and Vigilant Solutions, is the newest tool in the ATF’s surveillance arsenal. These systems allow agents to run a person’s face against databases scraped from social media and public images—often without a warrant, a court order, or even a written policy on privacy.

A GAO report from June 2021 warned that ATF had no training protocols and no safeguards in place when using the technology. In some cases, ATF officials didn’t even know that agents were sending photos to private commercial services. As of April 2023, ATF claimed it had stopped using these tools—but further investigation reveals they’ve simply outsourced the searches to state and local partners instead.

Connected to Trump Assassination Attempt

Things came to a head after the July 13, 2024, attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. Senator Ron Johnson revealed that ATF received and used facial images of shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks during the investigation—despite the agency 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 completely. Critics are now warning that if the ATF can use this technology on a presidential assassin, it can use it on any American it doesn’t like—including anyone who buys a gun, posts online about their rights, or dares to oppose the government’s gun control agenda.

A Registry in Disguise?

For years, Second Amendment defenders have warned that the ATF is quietly building a national gun registry. Now, with access to AI-powered facial recognition, the agency may not even need your name—they can find you by your face.

A GOA spokesman has warned in the past that facial recognition combined with ATF firearm records could amount to “a national gun registry by another name”—a path that leads to firearm confiscation.

With Congress debating funding for “Law Enforcement Advanced Analytics,” there’s growing concern that taxpayer dollars will be funneled into expanding the surveillance state—this time targeting peaceful gun owners.

Biggs’ Demands

Chairman Biggs’ letter to the ATF is a direct response to the agency’s abuses. He’s demanding:

  • All internal and external communications between the ATF and facial recognition providers
  • All contracts, payments, and agreements related to biometric surveillance
  • All emails, memos, and instructions from ATF leadership regarding use of the technology

This investigation could blow the lid off one of the most serious privacy violations in recent memory.

The federal government has already shown it can’t secure its own data. It leaked a terrorist watchlist, failed to protect tax information, and even lost sensitive biometric records in Afghanistan. Now they want gun owner data, and they want to identify us by our faces?

The Second Amendment isn’t just under attack in courtrooms and legislatures—it’s being chipped away in secret, behind the glow of surveillance screens. Gun owners must demand Congress put a stop to this overreach before it’s too late.

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