Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, March 16, 2026
Challenge to the ATF’s refusal to release vital data on US gun trafficking, as required by federal transparency laws.
The US is fueling gun trafficking and cartel violence in Latin America. We successfully sued the ATF so that critical data to help stop this troubling trend could be published.
On December 19, 2023, the US District Court for the Northern District of California partially granted our cross-motion for summary judgment and denied the ATF’s motion for summary judgment, remanding the proceedings back to the ATF and ordering the agency to revisit and respond to plaintiff Lindsay-Poland’s FOIA request in accordance with the court’s opinion.
On June 27, 2024, plaintiff John Lindsay-Poland voluntarily dismissed the case after receiving the requested data from ATF, pursuant to a stipulated agreement. View the published data.
GIFFORDS Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, together with Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, represented the individual plaintiff John Lindsay-Poland in a lawsuit against the US Department of Justice and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives (ATF), for unlawfully withholding critical data on gun trafficking from the United States to Latin America. Our suit, brought under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), challenged the federal government’s refusal to disclose data that the public has a legal right to access and a legitimate interest in knowing.
