NSSF: ATF Data Disproves Everytown’s Latest ‘Study’

Everytown’s latest “study” has done one thing, and that’s generate a lot of content for us here at Bearing Arms. None of it was a case of “Well, maybe they have a point, but…” or anything.

Mostly, it was laughter followed by ripping the entire thing to shreds.

There was so much to rip apart that there was plenty of fun for everyone. Yes, it was that pathetic, even by Everytown’s usual standards.

In fact, Larry Keane of the NSSF has joined in our reindeer games and points out that even the ATF’s own data shows that the so-called study’s claims are full of male bovine excrement.

When Facts Don’t Support the Agenda, Just Lie

“There are bad actors that have repeatedly sold these weapons to folks in the community, and they are still currently operating in the state, without any sort of accountability whatsoever,” said New Mexico state Rep. Andrea Romero, speaking at an Everytown news conference last week about the plans to propose legislation.

Perhaps she should have checked the data first. In April 2024, the ATF released Volume Three of the National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment. The report focused specifically on 9,700 ATF firearm trafficking investigations over a five-year period between 2017 and 2021.

The ATF’s own report found just 136 cases of illegal firearm trafficking tied to a federal firearms licensee (FFL) over the five-year period — just 1.6 percent of all 9,700 cases. With 134,516 FFLs at the end of 2021, that equates to just 0.1 percent of all FFLs being implicated in allegedly illegal firearm trafficking.

Conversely, illegal straw purchases and private sales accounted for 80 percent of all cases. Stolen firearms represented another 25 percent of cases of illegally trafficked firearms.

Even the ATF acknowledged that the firearm industry is doing its part in self-policing.

“The data analyzed in this report indicates that a shift in the types of trafficking channels used over the course of the last two decades has occurred,” the report states. “Corrupt FFL investigations represented almost 9% of trafficking investigations in the 2000 report, but now represent less than two percent of trafficking investigations.”

Now, I don’t think anyone believes for a moment that the cases in the ATF’s report necessarily represent a totality of FFLs doing shady things. Not everyone gets caught, after all.

But if it were nearly as prevalent as Everytown claims, then there would have been a lot more than 136 cases over five years. While the ATF doesn’t have infinite resources or anything, they do have enough that if it were as common for criminals to get their guns from FFLs as Everytown claims, they’d have found a whole lot more.

They didn’t.

See, the issue here is that Everytown doesn’t have to be right. They just have to be loud.

As we’ve already seen, some lawmakers are taking this “study” as sufficient evidence that licensed dealers are a problem that they’re trying to pass legislation to impact them. Whether they actually believe the so-called findings or not is pretty irrelevant. What we have is an entity with an axe to grind that has churned out “research” that ever-so-coincidentally just happens to mimic their advocacy, and no one bats an eye in the mainstream media or among anti-gun advocates.

And now they’re making up crap that makes no sense at all in the face of existing evidence.

What’s funny is that if the NRA started churning out studies that just happened to have pro-gun findings, the media would either ignore them or lambast them, even if they were completely sound in methodology.

But for Everytown, when even the ATF is dunking on you, it’s time to call it an eon and just go away.

Editor’s Note: The mainstream media continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment. 

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