Baltimore City is suing the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to gain access to certain gun crime data after the federal agency denied that information through a public records request.
Earlier this year, Baltimore City put in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to gain access to the top ten sources of crime guns in the city from 2018 to 2022. That request was denied.
“Right now, we're not able to know if there's one gun store responsible for a disproportionate number of the guns flowing into our city, or if there's one area where trafficking guns is more common than others,” said Mayor Scott during a Tuesday morning press conference.
Mayor Scott argues that with that data, the city could hold accountable stores that are linked to a high volume of gun crime, mostly through lawsuits.
The city is backed by Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that advocates for stricter gun laws, in the lawsuit which was filed on Monday afternoon in federal court. Alla Lefkowitz is an attorney with Everytown who explained how the AFT uses what is called “trace data.”
“So for example, when the Baltimore Police Department or any other local law enforcement recovers a gun at a crime scene, it notes down the make the model the serial number of the firearm, and then it submits a trace request to the ATF. The ATF then traces the flow of the gun from manufacturer to distributor, and then ultimately to the first retail sale,” she said.
The ATF cited something called the Tiahrt Amendment as the reason for denying the city’s request. That’s included in a 2003 bill and it prohibits the ATF from releasing data from its firearms trace database to anyone other than law enforcement. Under Tiahrt, the city says the police cannot share that data with policy makers.
But in its lawsuit, Baltimore argues the Tiahrt Rider does not exempt the data from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act.
“There is no good reason for this. Keeping the data a secret prevents Baltimore and other cities from educating the public about the sources of illegal guns in their communities. And it benefits no one but the gun industry,” said Baltimore’s Acting City Solicitor Ebony Thompson.
Without that data, the city argues it lacks an essential tool in reducing the homicide rate, which is about to go below 300 this year for the first time since 2014.
“This administration understands that public safety is a public health issue. And as with any public health issue, access to accurate and current data is of the utmost importance,” said Thompson.
David Pucino is the legal director with the Giffords Law Center, a non-profit whose mission is to end gun violence. He says the ATF has a history of interpreting the rider too narrowly.
“It's a real public safety problem that ATF is not providing this information as required by law to release,” he said, noting that there are exceptions.
“There's one justification for withholding trace data that makes perfect sense and that's if there's an active law enforcement investigation in place. If it's a possibility that this information could compromise an investigation into, for example, gun trafficking, then it makes perfect sense to withhold it,” he said.
But, as Baltimore’s lawsuit points out, open investigations are shielded from public information requests.
A spokesperson for the ATF declined to comment, citing the pending litigation. The agency told WYPR’s news partners at The Baltimore Banner that they do not keep trace data available in a searchable format in order to ensure compliance with federal law.
