Guns Are Getting From Dealers to Crime Scenes Faster: Report

Second volume of 4-part National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment released

Attorney General Merrick Garland delivers a statement at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, on Aug. 11, 2022. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Illegally trafficked firearms are getting from legitimate dealers to crime scenes faster than they have in the past, according to the second installment of The National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF).

The National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA) reported that between 2017 and 2021, nearly 25 percent of guns recovered at crime scenes had been legally possessed by a federal firearms license (FFL) holder less than a year before. This is more than 366,000 guns. In addition, 46 percent had a “time to crime” of three years or less.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the NFCTA is the first major joint academic study regarding firearms commerce and trafficking in more than 20 years. The report presents and analyzes data on the criminal use of firearms.

“In 2021, I directed ATF to begin work on the first study of criminal gun trafficking in over two decades, and today’s report is yet another historic step in that effort,” Garland wrote in a statement on Feb. 1, the same day the report was released.

This handout crime scene evidence photo provided by the Connecticut State Police, shows a Bushmaster rifle in Room 10 at Sandy Hook Elementary School following the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 children and six others dead. Photo by Connecticut State Police via Getty Images

The report says the time-to-crime data indicates increased illegal gun trafficking. This includes straw purchases in which a buyer legally purchases a gun, then sells or gives it to a person who cannot legally own a firearm. It also includes guns stolen and resold on the black market or used to commit other crimes.

Of the more than 1 million guns reported stolen between 2017 and 2021, 96 percent were stolen from private citizens. The report also shows that 72 percent of the traced guns are recovered in the same state in which they were acquired from an FFL dealer.

The report also highlighted the trend to increase semiautomatic weapons’ performance and rate of fire.

According to the report, there was a 570 percent increase in the recovery of kits to convert semiautomatic weapons into fully automatic machine guns, which are illegal under the National Firearms Act (NFA).

Part of the increase may be because ATF changed the definition of a machine gun under the NFA.

Definition Changed

In 2019, after a mass shooting in Las Vegas, Nevada, and, at the direction of then President Donald Trump, the ATF changed the definition of what constituted a machine gun to include the “bump stock.” For years the ATF ruled that a machine gun was a weapon that fired continuously while the trigger was held down.

Bump stocks had been deemed legal because they required a separate pull of the trigger for each shot, even as it increased the weapon’s rate of fire. On Oct. 1, 2017, a gunman in Las Vegas killed 60 people and wounded more than 400 using a rifle with a bump stock. Trump instructed the ATF to outlaw bump stocks, so the agency changed the definition of a machine gun.

Volume I of the NFCTA was released in May 2022. That report, Firearms in Commerce, presented and analyzed data collected by ATF and other federal agencies on firearms manufacture, export, and import. According to the statement released by the ATF, experts from academia, the ATF, and related fields worked together to produce the report. There are two more volumes still to be produced.