By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Buried in a lengthy report from Everytown for Gun Safety—the Michael Bloomberg-backed gun prohibition lobbying group—are a couple of acknowledgements which anti-gunners may not want the public to notice.
After noting how a majority of guns entering the illegal trafficking pipeline come from licensed gun dealers, the report reveals, “Theft from gun stores is a shockingly large problem. Between 2017 and 2023, gun dealers reported 46,072 firearms stolen in 7,140 theft incidents,” and subsequently adds, “Unsurprisingly, persons under the age of 18 involved in firearms trafficking predominantly obtain their crime guns by stealing them from licensed gun shops. While just 5 percent of traffickers investigated by the ATF were under age 18, nearly 84 percent of trafficking cases involving juveniles were thefts from gun stores.”
The report also says straw purchases feed the illicit gun market, but it notes that guns stolen by juveniles “are used in shootings almost a year faster on average than non-stolen firearms, underscoring the heightened risk that stolen guns pose to public safety.”
There are other revelations in the report, including this: “On average, only about 6 percent of all crime guns are used in shootings. But when looking specifically at trafficked guns, that number more than doubles: 15 percent of trafficked guns were linked to at least one shooting.”
Everytown says it analyzed trace data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, gathered between 2019 and 2023—during the Biden administration—and discerned that “an average of 10.3 percent of crime guns were purchased between two and three years prior to recovery in a crime, 14.4 percent were purchased one to two years prior, and an astonishing 25.3 percent of crime guns were purchased from a dealer just one year before being recovered in crimes.”
Everytown’s analysis also revealed that a “significant portion” of guns stolen from retailers “end up trafficked.”
According to Yahoo News, “ATF data also shows that trafficked guns are involved in twice as many shootings as non-trafficked firearms. Nearly 88% of people who received these guns were legally prohibited from buying firearms, according to the (Everytown) report.”
Everytown’s analysis is squarely aimed at licensed dealers, but it does provide interesting acknowledgements which may have been unintentional. What the billionaire-backed lobbying group essentially revealed is that criminals, regardless of age, commit crimes while dealers are encumbered with regulations that ultimately do not prevent theft, and law-abiding gun owners typically get left holding the bag.
