The U.S. House Appropriations Committee has voted to renew the Tiahrt Amendment, which limits local police access to a federal database of gun purchases.

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Metro Louisville Police Chief Robert White, who went to Washington to argue against the Tiahrt renewal, said before the vote that he wouldn't be "awfully surprised" if his side lost.

The amendment, named after Kansas Republican Rep. Todd Tiahrt, prohibits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from sharing its gun tracing information with local police unless that weapon has already been used in a crime.

"The whole approach to policing in our community and across the country," Chief White said, "is that to really be effective and to have long-term success, you must focus on prevention, and crime prevention heavily relies on collaboration."

The Tiahrt Amendment "is contrary to good policing," he said.

But Rep. Tiahrt said that his amendment is necessary, not just to protect the privacy of gun owners and to spare out-of-state gun dealers from being sued by the likes of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, but to avoid risks that the identities of police officers and other details could fall into the hands of criminals.

Yet language proposed to protect against such unintended consequences was shot down the other day.

The message of the Appropriations Committee's vote is clear: Once again, the interests of gun owners, dealers and manufacturers come first, and it's just too bad if that hamstrings police departments struggling to cope with the influx of illegal firearms onto their streets.