There's something very wrong with the anti-gunners over at Everytown. Not only is the organization's president also president of The Trace, the group also kicked off The Smoking Gun, which is basically the same thing as The Trace, but about the gun industry itself. The incestuous relationship between The Trace and Everytown is bad enough--they're more open about The Smoking Gun being part of their efforts--but then they all pretend there's no relationship at all.
Take this report from The Smoking Gun, where they make a big thing about the 25 cities with the highest count of "crime guns." Let's start, as most things should, at the beginning.
The Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund has published a new “Straight to the Source” report offering one of the clearest pictures yet of the top cities where crime guns originate nationwide. The report follows Everytown’s previous reporting naming the top manufacturers of crime guns and outlining how gun dealers made at least $695 million selling guns that were trafficked and recovered from crime scenes.
Absolutely no mention of them being part of Everytown, except at the very bottom of the page, which most people who aren't familiar with the site will never see. Kind of sketchy, to say the least. If we refer to something at some other entity we're affiliated with, such as any of the Townhall sites, we acknowledge that relationship.
Still, if they're making a point, does it matter?
Well, maybe not, but the problem is that this report is kind of meaningless.
Using city-level crime gun trace data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the report identifies the 25 U.S. cities where licensed gun dealers sold the highest number of firearms later recovered and traced in criminal investigations between 2017 and 2021. Together, gun dealers in these cities were linked to 209,748 crime guns — roughly 14 percent of all crime guns recovered and traced nationwide during that period.
For years, the public has had little access to detailed information about which gun dealers are repeatedly supplying firearms that later show up at crime scenes. Congressional restrictions have largely blocked ATF from publicly releasing dealer-level crime gun trace data, leaving communities in the dark about which local sellers may be fueling gun trafficking. This report offers a rare look into where those guns are coming from, and why local leaders may need to step in as federal oversight continues to weaken.
Everytown uses "time-to-crime" to determine if trafficking occurs, and sure enough, the spout after TTC numbers below the three years they argue is an indicator of gun trafficking.
And, to be sure, that does connect with some cases of people conducting, say, a straw buy.
But it doesn't tell the whole story, because time-to-crime also includes people whose guns were stolen a year or so after being purchased--and that's a massive source of guns later used in crime. It also includes people who bought a gun, then had their financial circumstances change and sold it a year or two down the road to pay their rent.
Then the Everytown report says this bit: "Another key sign of trafficking is when a crime gun is recovered in the possession of someone other than the original purchaser."
Uh...is it? Again, stolen guns. Again, selling it due to financial downturns.
All it's an indicator of is that someone other than the original purchaser had the gun. It's not an indicator, in and of itself, of gun trafficking.
Going back to The Smoking Gun, we get an interesting admission.
According to the report, Houston ranked as the nation’s top source city for crime guns. Between 2017 and 2021, dealers in Houston sold 22,799 firearms later recovered and traced in criminal investigations, the highest of any city in the country. Houston was followed by Las Vegas (15,944), Phoenix (14,612), Memphis (12,966), and San Antonio (12,875).
Population size alone does not explain why these cities account for so many crime guns. The report found no clear correlation between a city’s population or number of licensed gun dealers and its crime gun totals. Instead, it notes that a small number of bad actor dealers operating within each city are likely driving a disproportionate share of crime gun recoveries.
The report offers Jonesboro, Georgia, as one of the clearest examples of one dealer’s outsized impact. With an adult population of just 4,000 residents and an average of nine licensed gun dealers active from 2017 to 2021, Jonesboro ranked 11th nationwide for crime guns. The report points to one former Jonesboro dealer, Arrowhead Pawn, as a likely driver. Authorities previously traced more than 1,700 crime guns back to the store, which had been repeatedly cited for violations during ATF inspections before closing in 2023. Employees reportedly told inspectors they were too “busy” and “got distracted by other customers” to properly conduct firearm sales.
I'll also note that Jonesboro is just a bit outside of Atlanta, which does have a massive population. Couple someone who doesn't do what's required of them by the ATF, with a large population nearby, and you're going to see a lot more firearms going to people who shouldn't have them than you might otherwise.
It should be noted that the NSSF works hard to guide gun stores not to do what Arrowhead Pawn is alleged to have done.
But sure, the fact that the number of gun stores and the population doesn't correlate to the number of "crime guns" from a given city. What's interesting here is that if there are a lot of gun stores, then there are a lot of people buying guns. Otherwise, those stores would close down quickly, and if they haven't, someone's buying something.
So the interesting admission here is that, once again, they're basically telling us that the number of guns in private hands isn't correlated to the number of "crime guns" out there. Firearms purchased by law-abiding citizens are going to be highly represented in some of these cities, and those aren't the ones that are turning up at crime scenes or being recovered by police when arresting criminals in possession.
Weird, isn't it?
Of course, as they're one of Everytown's tentacles, they're not going to admit that the issue is not now, nor has ever been, the lawful market. A few bad actors are causing the problems, and their answer for that is to completely upend the system? Hardly.
