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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Jennifer Mascia is a news writer at The Trace. She previously covered gun violence at The New York Times.
Data
CDC data shows that more than 45,000 Americans died by gunfire for the first time, driven by a spike in homicides.
Ask The Trace
More than half of all firearm deaths are self-inflicted. A reader's question touches on a fault line in the nation's conversation about guns.
Active Shooting
The desire to keep kids safe has spawned a multibillion-dollar industry promising to turn schools into fortresses. Oxford High School is a prime example of that effort.
Daily Bulletin
What To Know Today Washington, D.C., homicides hit a nearly two-decade high. The District recorded its 200th homicide victim on Monday: A man was dead shot at a gas station on November 22. The city…
A reader wants to know if a person concerned about their own mental health can voluntarily flag themselves in the federal background check database.
A reader wants to know if loss, theft, and breakage have a significant effect on the country’s civilian gun stock.
What to Know Today NEW from THE TRACE: David Chipman won’t lead the ATF, but he says his resolve has been hardened by the nomination fight. In one of his first interviews since the president pulled his nomination last month, Chipman…
What To Know Today Shootings rock two North Carolina high schools. A student died after a shooting at Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem on Wednesday afternoon triggered a lockdown and a…
Q & A
Criminologist Daniel Semenza says global warming may devastate communities already hit hardest by shootings.
Law
Victim advocates and law enforcement officials say that a new state law taking aim at federal gun rules could hamstring attempts to disarm abusers and prevent local authorities from reporting stores for failing to run background checks.
What To Know Today Chicago’s mass shootings are rarely solved. The Chicago Sun-Times analyzed 212 mass shootings (defined as four or more people wounded) since 2016 and found that charges were filed in just 21 incidents — less than…
What To Know Today NYC program that sends mental health specialists to some 911 calls shows early success. Last month, the city launched B-HEARD, a pilot program in upper Manhattan that dispatches clinicians and paramedics instead of police to certain nonviolent…
ATF
If adopted, the rule would require brace owners to apply to the NFA Division, which has long been understaffed and routinely misses its own performance benchmarks.
How We Fix This
The Oregon county that encompasses Portland is one of the first local governments to tap the new federal stimulus to reduce shootings.
Domestic Violence
The San Jose transit shooting is the latest to illustrate the deadly connection between intimate partner violence and mass murder. How are these seemingly separate issues intertwined, and what can be done to save lives?
