The ATF, charged with policing the gun industry, lets dealers get away with falsifying records and selling firearms without background checks.
The programs, policies, and people driving positive change in America’s gun violence problem.
American lives, shaped by guns.
The National Rifle Association is one of the most powerful special interest groups in America. We’re investigating how it spends its money.
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Brian Freskos is a senior researcher and data analyst for the Conflict Awareness Project. He was previously a Chicago-based staff writer for The Trace, where he covered gun trafficking and community-based violence prevention.
Gun Trafficking
Tracking stolen firearms through the black market, from gun store thefts to crime scenes.
Background Checks
Private transactions, exceedingly slow reviews, and laws that don’t recognize the threat from abusers all pose steep challenges to keeping firearms away from people who can’t legally possess them.
Politics
But leaders of a dozen gun rights organizations say they don’t know anyone planning to monitor voting.
Community Violence
St. Louis has a murder rate three times higher than Chicago's. “We need to declare a state of emergency,” says one resident.
Gun Theft
Last year, Charlotte reported the third most gun thefts among the nearly 50 large cities that provided data to The Trace.
Data
“But our hands are tied,” one council member says.
We started with public records requests, but that wasn’t enough.
Police data shows thefts of firearms from vehicles are rising in many large cities. One gun swiped from a truck in Atlanta was used in three crimes, including a murder.
The totals were too familiar: At least 4,100 people killed. More than 8,650 wounded. But this year they came with the stirring of a national conversation about the communities gun violence affects most.
Law Enforcement
A protective order did not save Khalid Jabara.
Asir Brown, a teenager from Philadelphia, is one of at least 71 people shot at a barbecue this year.
Tracking a firearm's chain of custody is standard operating procedure for law enforcement — but the agency responsible for handling requests frequently can't answer essential questions.
Here’s what we know about how the government collects and organizes those names, and how the database has evolved.
Gun Policy
Unsurprisingly, they share characteristics with those opposing universal background checks.
Mass Shooting
"We're not afraid."
