Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
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Gun Trafficking Crime Gun Tracing
Overview
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POSITION: The Brady Campaign supports public access to crime gun trace data.  Crime gun trace data is an invaluable source of information about the movement of guns from the legal to the illegal market.  Law enforcement, researchers, the media, and the general public should have access to the crime gun trace database.

PROBLEM:  An appropriations rider, known as the Tiahrt Amendment, severely limits the authority of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to disclose crime gun trace data to the public.

Over the last ten years, law enforcement agencies nationwide have recovered more than two million crime guns. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) manually traces these crime guns from the gun manufacturer down through distributors and dealers until it identifies the sale of the gun to a member of the public. ATF then records the sales history of each crime gun in a massive computer database.

THREAT: The Tiahrt Amendment hides this valuable information from researchers, press, politicians and the public.  This information has been used to identify the sources of illegal guns, as well as to establish the effectiveness of policies to prevent illegal guns. The information is critical to efforts to save lives by stopping gun trafficking.

URGENCY: Past analyses of crime gun trace data by researchers and by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) have documented that thousands of guns move quickly from a relatively small number of licensed gun dealers into the illegal market.  We urgently need updated studies of gun trafficking based on tracing data to know if trafficking patterns have changed or stayed the same.

SOLUTION: Congress should repeal the Tiahrt Amendment as soon as possible.

Studies and Reports