What role do gun dealers play in gun trafficking?
A. Corrupt and negligent gun dealers divert substantial numbers of guns from the legal market to the illegal market. According to studies of gun trafficking, over an 18-month period: • 40,365 guns were trafficked directly by corrupt or negligent gun dealers (ATF, June 2000, p. 13) • 25,741 guns were trafficked by straw purchasers buying guns at corrupt or negligent gun dealers (ATF, June 2000, p. 13) • 6,084 guns were stolen from gun dealers (ATF, June 2000, p. 13). These numbers undercount gun trafficking from gun dealers. ATF has limited resources to conduct trafficking investigations. Consequently, it uncovers a fraction of the gun trafficking operations happening at any given time. Gun dealers also have thousands of guns “go missing” from their inventories. An analysis by the Brady Center in 2008 found that gun dealers “lost” at least 82 firearms every day, totaling more than 30,000 guns that year (Brady Center, 2008). In 1998, the former chief of ATF’s Crime Gun Analysis Branch, J
