AIM Act

Key Points

• The bill removes longstanding restrictions (known as the Tiahrt Amendments) that prevent the ATF from sharing firearms trace data with the public, researchers, and other agencies. This would allow broader access to information about where crime guns come from.
• It lifts the ban on the ATF creating a searchable, centralized digital database of gun purchase and sale records from licensed firearms dealers. Currently, federal law forces these records to be kept on paper or in non-searchable formats, slowing criminal investigations.
• The bill ends the requirement that background check records from the instant check system (NICS) be destroyed within 24 hours. Keeping records longer could help law enforcement identify straw purchases and patterns of illegal gun buying.
• The ATF would gain authority to inspect licensed gun dealers as often as needed and to require physical inventory checks. Current law limits routine compliance inspections to once per year and bars the ATF from requiring inventory counts.
• The standard for revoking a federal firearms license would change from proving a dealer "willfully" violated the law to proving they "knowingly" violated it. This lower legal bar makes it easier to shut down dealers who break the rules.
• Courts reviewing ATF license revocation decisions would no longer conduct de novo (from scratch) reviews and could only consider evidence that was previously presented to the ATF. This limits dealers' ability to introduce new arguments on appeal.