Everytown for Gun Safety isn't really about gun safety so much as gun control. This isn't exactly a startling revelation for you folks. We all know good and well that it is, no matter how they spin it.
But the mainstream media likes to keep pretending they're just some unbiased, nonpartisan organization that's really only interested in doing what's right, and in doing unbiased research to learn what that is.
The group's research is, basically, garbage, though. I mean, the fact that they're a gun control group that keeps releasing studies showing guns are bad should raise a lot of red flags all on its own.
And the latest "study" is a prime example of why that is.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has identified tens of thousands of guns trafficked across state lines since 2017, using gun trace data and other intelligence. It identified three major routes that guns take from mostly Southern states with less restrictive gun laws to states and cities with more restrictions.
Many of the guns noted in the report released Tuesday, traveled from places such as South Carolina and Georgia north along the Interstate 95 corridor. The other common paths are the Mississippi River route from states such as Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee to Illinois and the southwest pipeline from Arizona and Nevada to California.
Less than 30% of trafficked guns have been recovered in a state other than the one where they were purchased since 2017, according to ATF data. That leaves room for state initiatives and local law enforcement to participate in stemming the flow of guns used in crimes, advocates said.
The data shows guns are trafficked in four main ways: A straw purchaser buys a gun from a licensed seller for someone prohibited from owning one; a buyer gets guns from a licensed dealer to resell them as an unlicensed dealer who doesn't do background checks; people steal guns from licensed sellers and sell them on the black market; and people steal guns from cars and homes and resell them.
Three of those methods involve licensed gun sellers, advocates noted, making them the front line in preventing trafficking.
“Gun trafficking often begins at the sales counter,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law. “This is not an either/or proposition. Straw purchasers and gun traffickers must be prosecuted, and retailers like Academy operating on the front lines also have a critical responsibility to stop gun trafficking when faced with clear red flags.”
Fascinating, right?
It's pretty clear that, based on what we're seeing in this report, including the original text linked above, that the problem is straw buys. After all, three of the ways bad guys get guns are from licensed dealers, and two of those involve gun sales, so it's on them.
Except, it's really not.
Neither in this news piece nor the study itself do they provide any percentages of anything.
A 2019 study by the Department of Justice found just 11 percent of criminals got their firearms via a straw purchase. Another 10 percent got them through a retail purchase, meaning they weren't prohibited at the time of the purchase.
While straw buys make a lot of scary headlines, they're ridiculously rare. Everytown's report focused on one particularly notable example, where 119 firearms were purchased from various Academy Sports locations, then funneled northward from the Deep South, where there are fewer gun control laws and hoops for buyers to jump through, and into places like New York.
However, according to that same DOJ study, 43 percent get them via the black market, which typically means stolen guns, or the additional six percent who get them through theft themselves.
In short, very few are straw buys or some kind of illegal purchase at a gun store.
But what Everytown does is downplay this aspect, look at an outlier, present it as the typical case in question, then argue that curtailing gun rights is the only rational way to deal with the problem. They present information that helps make their case, while not presenting anything that might provide some accurate context.
The vast majority of guns that end up in criminal hands might have originated at a gun store, but they go through other people's hands before the criminal ever gets them. That doesn't stop Everytown from making up crap and pretending licensed dealers are both the cause and the solution to the problem.
Not that the mainstream media will ever call them on it.
Editor's Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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