Inspecting claims Pam Bondi is creating gun owner registry

In October 2025, a claim (archived) circulated online that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was creating a gun owner registry.

For example, on Oct. 7, Gun Owners of America, an organization founded to protect Second Amendment gun-ownership rights, wrote on X, ".@AGPamBondi is creating a registry of gun owners."

.@AGPamBondi is creating a registry of gun owners. https://t.co/9qezpY3whq

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) October 7, 2025

In its post, the group quoted a screenshot of a judgment in the case Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms & Explosives, in which a group of plaintiffs that included organizations supporting Second Amendment gun-ownership rights sued the ATF and then-Attorney General William Barr. The plaintiffs claimed federal laws restricting the sale of handguns and handgun ammunition to 18- to 20-year-olds infringed on their constitutional right to bear arms.

That judgement reportedly ordered three plaintiffs — the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Louisiana Shooting Association — to submit "a verified list of their members as of November 6, 2020," to the ATF and the attorney general's office. The Gun Owners of America post appeared to imply Bondi was using the information she allegedly "convinced" the judge to demand in order to build a gun owner registry.

In the days following the Oct. 7 judgment in Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms & Explosives, claims also circulated on X (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Threads (archived) and Bluesky (archived) that Bondi was creating a gun owner registry. Snopes readers wrote in asking whether the claim was true.

According to a motion to amend the judgment, lawyers for the U.S. government said it did not seek to "compel disclosure of the identity of members of private organizations." U.S. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon called (archived) allegations that the DOJ had asked the court to require release of member lists "false" in an X post. 

The Firearms Policy Coalition and Second Amendment Foundation both said in statements on their websites that they would take legal action to protect their member data from government access. The organizations joined the ATF and the attorney general's office in asking Judge Robert R. Summerhays to change his judgment to remove that requirement. Summerhays vacated the judgment soon after.

Snopes found no evidence at the time of this writing that Bondi or the Department of Justice was creating a registry of gun owners. When we asked the DOJ about the department's and Bondi's opinions on creating such a registry, a spokesperson for the DOJ replied with a link to Dhillon's X post that called Bondi "the most pro-2A AG in US history." Given the above, we leave this claim unrated.

We reached out to the the White House to ask its official policies on creating a gun owner registry and whether it had directed Bondi to create one and await a reply to our query.

DOJ 'did not ask' for members lists

At the time of this writing, it was unclear whether the Oct. 7 judgment would actually require the gun-rights groups to submit member lists. On Oct. 10, Summerhays vacated his judgment asking the organizations to submit "a verified list of their members."

Summerhays initially asked member organizations to submit membership lists because of the limited scope of his ruling. 

The judge's Oct. 7 judgment applied only to "(a) Caleb Reese, Joseph Granich, Emily Naquin, and (b) individuals and federally licensed firearms importers, manufacturers, dealers or collectors who were members of Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc., Second Amendment Foundation, or Louisiana Shooting Association at the time this action was filed on November 6, 2020." 

Reese, Granich and Naquin were named plaintiffs who were 18 to 20 years old at the time of the lawsuit and so could not legally purchase handguns or handgun ammunition. 

Summerhays also placed a geographical limitation on the ruling, writing that it applied to the above people "within the jurisdictional boundaries of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit (i.e., Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas)."

Given the limited scope of the judgment, Summerhays wrote, "Within twenty-one (21) days of issuance of this Judgment, those Plaintiffs identified at paragraph 2(b) shall provide to Defendants a verified list of their members as of November 6, 2020." Paragraph 2(b) named the Firearms Policy Coalition, Second Amendment Foundation and Louisiana Shooting Association.

The plaintiffs and the defendants in the case objected to Summerhays' requirement to submit "verified" member lists. 

Adam Kraut, the Second Amendment Foundation's executive director, criticized the limited scope of Summerhays' ruling. Kraut told Guns.com:

What the court has done here is say that this law is unconstitutional, but in order for an 18-year-old to avoid having their constitutional rights trounced by it today, they must live in one of only three states in the nation and have been a member of SAF at age 13. And even then, they're only covered if SAF discloses their membership to the government under duress. 

Dhillon wrote (archived) on X, "The court ordered something DOJ did not ask for—it ordered the plaintiffs to submit members lists. On Friday, DOJ and the plaintiffs submitted a joint filing asking the court to correct that misstep."

The DOJ, ATF and plaintiffs submitted that motion on Oct. 10, before Summerhays vacated his judgment.

In sum …

At the time of this writing, Snopes found no evidence that Bondi or the DOJ were creating a registry of gun owners. Though a federal judge did order three gun owner organizations or associations to hand over verified member lists to government bodies, the same judge later vacated that judgment. It was unclear at the time of this writing what a revised judgment in Reese v. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms & Explosives would entail. 

The Oct. 7 judgment did not permit Bondi or the DOJ to create a gun owner registry and would have only released outdated member information from the three groups involved in the lawsuit. There was no evidence to suggest Bondi or the DOJ would have used that information to create a registry, as Dhillon wrote the DOJ had not asked for the information.

The separation of powers in the U.S. means that Bondi, head of the Department of Justice in the executive branch, does not control rulings made by judges in the nation's courts, which are part of the judicial branch.

At the time of this writing, people wanting to purchase a firearm from a licensed dealer had to pass a background check via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The FBI, which runs the system, said on its website, "The NICS is not to be used to establish a federal firearm registry."