By Paul Lathrop | Contributing Editor
Anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety was handed a loss by the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals Dec. 23 when the appellate court reversed a lower court ruling that the gun prohibition lobbying group could obtain statistics on firearms used in suicides and attempted suicides.
According to Courthouse News, the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund had “demanded that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) produce relevant records under the Freedom of Information Act.”
While Everytown won the case at the district court level in August, the ATF appealed to the Second Circuit for the reversal. The appeals court agreed with ATF that federal law blocks access to the Firearms Trace System database under legislation commonly known as the Tiahrt Riders. Anti-gun rights groups have tried for years to get access to the data.
Writing for the court, U.S. Circuit Judge Steven J. Menashi noted, “Ultimately the question before us is relatively straightforward: whether the 2012 Tiahrt Rider, either expressly or by implication, exempts FTS data from FOIA disclosure. We conclude that it does.”
Menashi explained that, since “Congress does not use the same words to accomplish the opposite objective,” its intention was to reenact and strengthen its anti-disclosure language between 2009 and 2012 installments of the Tiahrt Rider, the latter of which pertains to the case.
“Accordingly, FTS data remains exempt from FOIA disclosure, and the district court erred in concluding otherwise,” Menashi added.
Everytown spokesperson Alla Lefkowitz told Courthouse News via email, “The public has the right to access government data on gun violence.”
“Today’s decision dramatically weakens the OPEN FOIA Act of 2009, which was passed precisely to ensure that the government would not keep information pertaining to favored industries secret.”
Everytown’s original Freedom of Information Act request was for “records related to traces of firearms used in suicide across several variables, including the length of time between purchase and use; the type of gun used; the state of use relative to state of purchase; and whether the user was the individual buyer.”
This decision sets up a Circuit Court split with the 9th Circuit ruling the opposite way on a similar case in early December.
