Back in May 2021, a sweeping investigation by The Trace and USA TODAY found that the ATF — the federal agency in charge of policing the gun industry — had been mostly toothless and conciliatory, bending over backward to go easy on wayward gun dealers. Our reporters found that dealers were largely immune from serious punishment and enjoyed layers of protection unavailable to most other industries; their analysis showed some dealers outright flouting the rules, selling weapons to convicted felons and domestic abusers, lying to investigators and fudging records to mask their unlawful conduct. 

Some weeks later, the Biden administration announced that it would crack down on “rogue gun dealers” who break the law. President Joe Biden asked the agency to implement a zero-tolerance policy toward lawbreaking dealers; the first indication that the ATF was following through came shortly after, in fiscal year 2022, when data released by the agency showed that it had revoked gun store licenses at a higher rate than in any year since 2006.

That trend appears to have continued. In the 2023 fiscal year, the ATF revoked a record-setting total of 173. And this year, The Trace’s Champe Barton reports, the numbers went up further: 195 licenses were revoked in fiscal year 2024. Experts say the Biden administration’s targeting of gun retailers could prove one of the more consequential gun violence prevention strategies of the past 20 years.

From The Trace

What to Know Today

The Supreme Court decided not to take up a highly anticipated review of restrictions on gun ownership for people with felony convictions. The court sent a case challenging federal prohibitions back to the 11th Circuit, delaying a conflict stemming from its landmark Bruen decision two years ago. As The Trace’s Chip Brownlee reported in September, no group has used the ruling more often than people whose felony records bar them from possessing guns; some 1,100 federal court decisions citing Bruen included a challenge to the felon gun ban, making it the single most frequently contested statute by far. [Courthouse News

When a Sangamon County, Illinois, sheriff’s deputy with a history of misconduct allegations shot Sonya Massey in her home this summer, local officials characterized the police killing as an isolated incident by a “rogue individual.” But thousands of pages of records indicate that the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Office has a history of misconduct allegations and accountability failures that long predate the deputy. [CBS

Some gun influencers with large followings on YouTube are leaving the platform after it tightened rules on videos featuring firearms. In June, YouTube banned content showing the removal of gun safety devices, restricted viewership of videos showing the use of automatic or homemade weapons to those 18 or older, and expanded enforcement of an existing policy concerning content that links to firearm retailers. The tension illustrates how “the entire industry feeds off of YouTube,” one gun reviewer said, “whether they will admit it or not.” [NBC

Vice President Kamala Harris’s record as a prosecutor has been a point of contention in her race for the White House. She’s been criticized for being both “tough” and “soft” on crime — a spokesperson for former President Donald Trump’s campaign called her “soft on murderers, gun criminals, and drug dealers.” Those who knew her as a prosecutor, however, say these claims are meritless, and obscure her history as a nuanced attorney who never fit into one political box. [Los Angeles Times

A teenager was taken into custody after sheriff’s deputies responding to “disturbance with gunfire” found two adults and three school-age children dead in a home near Seattle; a teenage girl who lived in the house was injured. Details about the killing remain sparse, but a spokesperson for the King County Sheriff’s Office described the shooting as a “family incident” and “clearly a domestic violence incident that involves not only a young man who’s now in significant trouble, it involves firearms. A young man and firearms.” [The Washington Post/USA TODAY

The 1984 Victims of Crime Act, also known as VOCA, funds programs that support millions of domestic violence victims. As rates of intimate partner violence have soared since the pandemic, those services have become more critical — but VOCA funding has been plummeting, and Congress hasn’t taken action on a promising legislative fix. The stakes are high: More than half of all intimate partner homicides involve a firearm, and domestic gun violence is one of the leading causes of homicide death for women in America. Without support for victims, said one family court judge, “the consequence may be death.” [Mother Jones

The University of Michigan’s decades-old ban on gun possession was allowed to stand after the state Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a lower court ruling. The Michigan Court of Appeals reviewed the case in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 Bruen decision, and found that because schools count as a “sensitive place” the university was authorized to regulate guns on its campus. [Associated Press

For people who live in swing states, receiving political junk mail is a fact of life during election season, but this year feels like something else. Mintt, a company that tracks direct mail, found 14,000 different mail cards directed to millions of households in nine swing states, most of them from Republicans. In Philadelphia, editor David Firestone found that many of the mailers center on fears of crime, and that many feature false claims about violent crime in Pennsylvania and the state’s largest city. [The New York Times]

Data Point

At least 30 — the number of challenges to the federal statute banning people with felony convictions from having guns that have succeeded. While that number is small compared with the 1,100 or so court decisions involving a challenge to the ban, it marks a stark departure from the past, when effectively none succeeded. [The Trace]

Non Sequitur

The Brain Collector: “Using cutting-edge methods, Alexandra Morton-Hayward is cracking the secrets of ancient brains — even as hers betrays her.” [The Guardian]