Snopes has a long and sordid history as a mouthpiece of the left. Democrats' falsehoods get the benefit of nuance or outright fabrication, while Republicans' hyperbole is treated as if every word was meant as said.
But now, it's covering for Republican Attorney General Pam Bondi, and blowing it.
Bondi and President Donald Trump have already done a lot more for gun rights than any past administration I can remember. I'm not going to disparage that in the least. They deserve praise for what they've done.
And they deserve criticism for where they fall down.
Bondi, for example, was never the most pro-gun choice for attorney general. She had a spotty record in Florida, after all, and so when the Department of Justice (DOJ) threw its weight behind a court order to have gun rights groups hand over their membership rolls, Gun Owners of America (GOA) was less than pleased.
.@AGPamBondi is creating a registry of gun owners. https://t.co/9qezpY3whq
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) October 7, 2025
Now, the order for the membership list has been vacated, thankfully, but this is far from the first and only example of Bondi backing something that could well lead to a gun registry despite the law.
There's also Bondi's defense of the Biden-era "engaged in the business" rule, which creates a confusing framework of who would be determined to be engaged in selling guns as a business. The definition just says selling a gun "for profit," which is a lot more vague than people might realize. That would push many to carry out sales via licensed dealers, essentially creating a back-door universal background check.
There would be exceptions, but enough would be covered to be concerning.
Then we have the fact that when a licensed gun dealer closes shop, they have to send their records to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Normally, these just get stored on a shelf, but the ATF is digitizing these records, putting them all into an easily searchable database.
When you also remember that most of these stores are small businesses and small businesses don't often last longer than five or 10 years, that means most Form 4473s will end up in ATF custody.
Couple all that together, and it's not unreasonable to see a gun registry developing right before our eyes, and in violation of federal law.
But Snopes sees it differently:
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."
However, as Gun Owners of America argued, the DOJ convinced the judges that this was required. When coupled with everything else, there actually is evidence that Bondi is either creating a registry or simply allowing one to be created on her watch.
I get that Dhillon says the DOJ didn't ask for it, but even absent that, the evidence still exists. It's not conclusive, but it's enough that people should at least express some concern.
Snopes, which is normally ridiculously hard on Republicans, decided to treat this case as if it were checking a claim about a Democrat and softballed it. Maybe it's because it doesn't know the totality of what's going on within the DOJ and the ATF, specifically, to recognize how this is just another cog in the machine, bringing a registry to fruition.
The one time they cover for Bondi is the one time they probably shouldn't have.
But since I suspect everyone at Snopes is really cool with gun registration, I'm not remotely surprised.
