I think the below article is a good one. Although it doesn't explain much on felons/restricted illegal gun owners commiting most of the gun crimes. Mass shootings are horrible. But there are more killed because of illegal gun owners. Who frankly don't care and ignore gun laws. Imo.
Thanks for linking this very informative article. Much more at link. (My apologies for the bolding and font size not done by me. It was copy and paste and not sure how to change.)
6 major takeaways from the ATF's first report in 20 years on U.S. gun crime
"It's been decades since we, the public, received this level of detail from ATF about guns that it's tracing and about gun commerce as well," she said. "So that in and of itself is a very positive development."
Here are some of the takeaways from the report.
Legally purchased guns can change hands and end up being used in crimes
The ATF found that 54% of traced crime guns
were recovered by law enforcementmore than three years after their purchase. Those guns were legally purchased, but were later used in crimes, the report indicated.
"Crime guns may change hands a number of times after that first retail sale, and some of those transactions may be a theft or violate one or more regulations on firearm commerce," the ATF's report reflected.
More than 1 million guns were stolen from private citizens from 2017 to 2021
A huge way those legally purchased firearms get into the hands of criminals is through theft, the ATF said. In five years, there were more than 1 million firearms stolen from private citizens and reported to authorities.
There's a caveat here, however. Federal law doesn't require individual gun owners to report the loss or theft of their firearm to police.
And while local laws vary, it also isn't a requirement in many states to report a stolen gun, either — so the number of gun thefts could be much higher.
Ghost guns remain difficult to track and are increasingly used in crime
Privately made firearms, also called "ghost guns," and their involvement in crime "is an emerging issue,"
the ATF said in its analysis. Still, law enforcement agencies are just beginning to establish uniform training on how to recognize, identify, and report ghost guns.
The number of suspected ghost guns recovered by law enforcement agencies and sent to the ATF for tracing and tracking "increased by 1,083% from 2017 (1,629) to 2021 (19,273)." This indicates, for one thing, that these ghost guns are increasingly being used to commit crimes, the ATF concludes.
In five years, the number of illegal machine gun conversion devices recovered by law enforcement agencies has jumped 570%
Conversion devices make semi-automatic firearms into fully automatic machines guns.
To put this new data into context, from 2012 to 2016, ATF reported the recovery of 814 machine gun conversion devices, the agency told NPR. From 2017 to 2021, however, that number skyrocketed to 5,454 recoveries.
Pistols represented nearly 70% of the crime guns traced between 2017 and 2021
Semi-automatic rifles like the AR-15
often make headlines when they are used to commit mass shootings in the United States. But handguns are most often used to commit crimes, according to ATF data.
There's a lot of data, but it's still limited
The report only reflects a glimpse of the full picture when it comes to guns in the U.S. Firearm tracing, as well as ballistic imaging policies and practices, vary across these local agencies, the ATF said.
In 2021, 47.2% of law enforcement agencies (8,679 out of 17,981 agencies) were participating in ATF's eTrace program, which tracks firearms used in crimes. And as of 2021, there were only 259 cities with National Integrated Ballistic Information Network sites (which analyzes ballistic information). These databases are where the ATF pulled information for this report.
