Title: Commerce in Firearms in the United States

Publication Date: February 2000

What does it say?

Under the Clinton Adminstration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms produced reports on the firearms industry and on illegal gun traffficking revealed by ATF investigations and analyses of crime gun trace data.

Conceived as the first report in an annual series, this report describes all aspects of the firearm industry in the United States, reviews the impact of the Brady law's dealer licensing provisions on the size and characteristics of the population of licensed dealers, and reviews ATF's anti-trafficking strategies including the use of crime gun trace data.

This report provides the statistic that "1.2 percent of all gun dealers account for 57.4 percent of all crime gun traces" (p. 23).

ATF has not since issued a similar report and public access to crime gun trace data has been cut off by the Tiahrt Amendment.

How can I use it?

Use this report to advocate for a common sense comprehensive set of policies to help law enforcement prevent gun trafficking.  We can do this by giving law enforcement new legal authority to crack down on corrupt gun dealers and once again making crime gun trace data available to the public. We can pass effective laws that make sense:  requiring Brady criminal background checks on all gun sales, not just those by licensed dealers; banning military-style assault weapons with high capacity magazines, and limiting the number of handguns that can be bought at one time.

Citation

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Commerce in Firearms in the United States, Washington, DC: Department of the Treasury, February 2000

[209]