The ATF, charged with policing the gun industry, lets dealers get away with falsifying records and selling firearms without background checks.
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American lives, shaped by guns.
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Alex Yablon was a reporter at The Trace.
The Business of Guns
The market for smart guns has been plagued by years of false starts, but a new company believes it can crack the code to getting Americans to accept personalized firearms. The Philadelphia-based LodeStar Firearms is developing a smart handgun…
Gun Policy
The National Rifle Association may have gotten its way when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced it would revisit its decision not to regulate bump stocks. By putting the onus on the bureau, the NRA helped…
The federal law banning gun sales to people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence does not violate the Second Amendment, an appellate court panel ruled on Thursday. In a 2-1 decision, judges on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld…
Community Violence
A new Chicago Sun-Times investigation into the city’s deaths by gun has a stunning statistic at its heart: not only did the city’s 2016 murder count rise to its highest level in 19 years, but fatal gunshot victims…
Data
Last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions warned that “violent crime is up in many places in the country,” especially in Baltimore, where he delivered his speech. Sessions linked the surge to illegal immigration and transnational gangs, like MS-13. But…
Domestic Violence
Politicians and law enforcement officials across the country are beginning to experiment with new approaches to reducing domestic violence and gun deaths by forcing abusers who aren’t allowed to own guns to actually surrender weapons still in their possession. Under…
Alex Yablon
A protest in Austin, Texas, this weekend became a Charlottesville-in-miniature as anti-immigrant activists squared off with anti-racist factions over the city’s sanctuary policy. Police officers were trying to escort the opposing groups marching toward the state capitol when a fight…
National Rifle Association
Add the National Rifle Association to the groups that are putting money into the effort to elect the Alabama Republican Roy Moore to the United States Senate. In the four weeks since allegations first surfaced that Moore had sexually…
Concealed Carry
The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to pass the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, which would require all 50 states to recognize one another’s permits to carry concealed firearms, regardless of the gulfs that can exist between licensing standards.
After two hours of debate, the House of Representatives today approved legislation that would force all states to recognize one another’s permits to carry concealed firearms. For the National Rifle Association, the passage of the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017,…
This week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, the current incarnation of a proposal that has stood as the National Rifle Association’s top federal legislative priority for a…
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee advanced the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act through the markup process this week. It may soon get a vote on the House floor. The bill would allow someone who is permitted to carry a…
Missing Pieces
President Donald Trump vented outrage on Friday morning after a jury in San Francisco acquitted Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, an undocumented immigrant, of first-degree murder in the 2015 killing of Kate Steinle. Steinle died after she was shot while…
White men who have lost financial stability — or think that they soon will — find moral and emotional solace in their firearms, more so than nonwhite gun owners or those on sound economic footing, according to a new study…
Background Checks
A bipartisan group of senators unveiled a bill on Thursday morning that would reward states for improving their reporting of criminal records and domestic violence data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s gun background check system, and punish those that…
