WASHINGTON — The most comprehensive federal report on guns and crime in more than two decades shows a declining turnaround between the purchase of a gun and its recovery from a crime scene, indicating that legally purchased firearms are being used more rapidly in crimes nationwide.
It also documents a rise in the use of conversion devices that fire a semi-automatic rifle like a machine gun, along with increasing seizures of so-called ghost guns, privately made firearms that are difficult to track.
The report comes as the nation grapples with a rise in violent crime, particularly involving guns.
Much of the data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives report was not previously widely available, and its release is intended to help police and policymakers reduce gun violence, Director Steve Dettelbach said. “Information is power,” he said.
The report shows that 54% of the guns police found at crime scenes in 2021 were purchased within three years, a double-digit increase since 2019. The faster turnaround may indicate illicit arms trafficking or a straw purchase — if someone who can legally buy a gun buys a gun to sell to someone who is not legally allowed to own a gun. The increase was largely due to guns purchased less than a year ago, it said.
The number of new guns in the US as a whole increased significantly during this period as gun sales broke records during the coronavirus pandemic.
Most weapons used in crimes have changed hands since they were purchased, the report said. It also found what Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco called an epidemic of stolen guns: more than 1.07 million firearms were reported stolen between 2017 and 2021. Almost all of them, 96%, came from private individuals.
Meanwhile, the report also documents a more than five-fold increase in the number of devices that convert a legal semi-automatic weapon into an illegal full-auto. Between 2012 and 2016, the ATF retrieved 814 of these, but that number rose to 5,414 over the five-year period documented in the report.
A conversion device was used in a mass shooting that killed six and injured 12 in Sacramento last April in what officials described as a shootout between rival gangs.
The document also traces the rise of “ghost guns,” privately manufactured firearms with no serial numbers that are increasingly appearing at crime scenes across the country.
The ATF tracked down more than 19,000 privately made firearms in 2021, more than double the number from the previous year. This jump is a result of part of the agency encouraging police to send them the guns so they can be traced, though they typically haven’t provided as much information as typical firearms. The weapons have unique ballistics and other properties that can be useful for investigators.
The report came after Attorney General Merrick Garland asked the ATF to produce the first comprehensive study of the criminal arms trade in more than 20 years.