New Jersey’s Attorney General Matthew Platkin has turned every licensed firearms dealer in the state into an unwilling data warehouse, demanding a full decade of Glock transaction records under the banner of Davenport v. Glock. The move is being sold as routine oversight, yet it sweeps in thousands of law-abiding purchasers who have never been accused of wrongdoing, effectively creating a de-facto registry that the Supreme Court has repeatedly warned against. When the NRA labels the tactic “Orwellian,” it isn’t hyperbole; it’s recognition that once government agents possess serial numbers, dates, and buyer details, those files rarely shrink—they metastasize into tools for future permitting schemes, insurance mandates, or outright confiscation lists.

For the Second Amendment community the subpoena is less about Glocks and more about precedent: if one manufacturer can be forced to surrender its entire customer footprint, every other brand becomes fair game the moment a politically motivated AG decides to “study” crime. June 15 now functions as a quiet constitutional tripwire; compliance hands future administrations a ready-made database, while resistance invites crippling legal costs that smaller FFLs cannot absorb. Either outcome chills commerce and erodes the practical exercise of the right to keep and bear arms, proving once again that incremental record-keeping campaigns often achieve what outright bans cannot.