ATF data shows that in 2020, police recovered almost twice as many guns with a short “time-to-crime” — in this case, guns recovered within a year of their purchase — than in 2019. Law enforcement officials generally view a short time-to-crime as an indicator that a firearm was purchased with criminal intent, since a gun with a narrow window between sale and recovery is less likely to have changed hands. Altogether, more than 87,000 such guns were recovered in 2020, almost double the previous high. And almost 68,000 guns were recovered in 2020 with a time-to-crime of less than seven months (meaning they were less likely to have been purchased the previous year).

New Data Suggests a Connection Between Pandemic Gun Sales and Increased Violence

As usual, the way numbers are presented by the loyal minions of Bloomberg not necessarily represent the scandal they wanted it to be. It is true that the raw number of time-to-trace firearms almost doubled from 2019 (67,841 v. 35.683) they do fail to compare the number of firearms that went in the market during the same periods. For 2019, almost 14 million guns were sold while in 2020, even The Trace acknowledges somewhat in passing with a graphic the reality of a brutal increase: some 14 million for 2019 versus almost 23 million in 2020. That comes to 0.25% of weapons sold are in the 7-month Time to Trace in 2019 goes up to an “”scandalous” 0.3% of weapons sold in 2020 or a 0.05% increase as weapons sales rose what? %35 to 40%?

And, of course and the same as with ATF, we have no data on how those firearms reached crime scene but for a few examples and obviously The Trace selects the most scandalous like a fight between neighbors or some other stupid encounter.  It is interesting that The Trace does mention in another article not linked to this one that FFLs reported in 2020 the loss of almost 13,000 weapons. We do not have how many of those traced firearms were stolen from gun owners or bought via Straw Purchase or simply were used in crimes by the original legal buyers. The last one I am willing to bet would be such an infinitesimal number that it would not even be considered as statistical aberration, but The Trace has no problem trying to “suggest” in passing it would be the biggest one.

The scandal that The Trace tries to create simply does not exists for the reasons they are trying to push. We as gun owners still gave an issue to resolve which is the gun stolen from vehicles, but I also doubt this is a huge part of where the 7 month traced guns come from.

Now, if we could only address the problem of letting criminals walk free and giving them free reign of our cities to burn and pillage and they want, maybe we will see less crime in the country.

But that is never what groups like The Trace are about and we know it.

Hat tip to RogerG