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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The Business of Guns
The Trace found 20 recent listings in which sellers posted gun cases or packaging as a way to hawk firearms.
Ghost Guns
Everything you need to know about the homemade, untraceable firearms that are increasingly turning up at crime scenes.
After an international manhunt, Wilson pleaded guilty to a felony in Texas court. But the particulars of his deal left him in a legal gray area that allows him to own and work with firearms.
Update, August 28: All content has been removed from IvanTheTroll’s Tumblr account. Tumblr has not responded to a request for comment. Banned by the major social media platforms, the 3D-printed gun community migrated this summer to less-trafficked corners…
Dozens of online retailers sell de facto silencers, making it easy for gun owners to avoid federal screening and registration.
Mass Shooting
Google Shopping has a policy against posting gun accessories. But we identified multiple listings for high-capacity magazines.
The Russian-developed 8M3 rifle round is known for its ability to expand and fragment on impact, creating catastrophic wounds.
Bans on sharing 3D gun blueprints have proven porous, but the community that makes them is migrating to platforms more amenable to the cause.
In 2017, Honor Defense was called out by the gun community for making weapons that can fire when dropped. Now a police officer is suing the company after he was shot by his.
Three Democratic senators sent a letter to the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Department of Commerce urging them to adopt new regulations requiring toy and replica guns to look markedly different from their real-life counterparts. The inquiry follows…
The new products can reliably fire 40 or more rounds before requiring reloading. They’re ending up in the hands of mass shooters.
Three weeks after The Trace reported that Twitter users were freely distributing design files for 3D-printed guns, the social media platform rolled out a new policy prohibiting the practice. The rule change is part of a wide-ranging update…
The platforms say they don’t allow users to post blueprints or how-tos for building ghost guns. But the files continue to circulate.
Community Violence
Feds say nearly a third of firearms recovered in the state are homemade, unserialized, and untraceable.
Gun Policy
The proposal comes after an investigation by The Trace and The New Yorker found that thieves are exploiting lax security and stealing thousands of weapons that end up on the black market.
