Gun reporting rule targeted in House

WASHINGTON, July 13 (UPI) -- A House committee voted Wednesday to defund enforcement of semi-automatic rifle sales reporting.

Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., sponsored the amendment to the Justice Department funding bill to block a rule that makes gun dealers report within five days multiple sales to the same person of semi-automatic rifles with removable magazines. The administration says the program aims to stem violence along the Mexican border.

"For more than a decade, efforts to track rifle purchases and create a national gun registry have failed to gain support in Congress, so the ATF is working to implement these regulations using rules written by unelected bureaucrats," Rehberg told The Hill.

The House has been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives over Operation Fast and Furious, which sold thousands of weapons in the Southwest to known and suspected straw buyers for Mexican drug cartels in an attempt to track them.

Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., denounced Rehberg's measure as a gift to the National Rifle Association.

"The NRA is so afraid that the people who are really funding the NRA, the gun manufacturers, might lose some sales that they were willing to sacrifice the lives of these people that are casualties of this gun war," he said. "We're enabling that slaughter to continue."