Brady Campaign misrepresents ATF data to promote 'more guns, more crime' message

Austin Gun Rights Examiner ^ | Howard Nemerov

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The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, America’s preeminent gun control organization, recently issued a report suggesting that states with “weak gun laws” are the nation’s major sources of “crime guns.” But as with other Brady reports, a deeper examination is in order before accepting their conclusions.

Curious turnaround

Earlier this year, the Brady Campaign claimed that the Tiahrt Amendment restricted law enforcement from accessing ATF trace data:

The so-called Tiahrt Amendment (named after Congressman Todd Tiahrt of Kansas) includes several riders attached annually to Justice Department appropriations legislation since 2004 that make it harder for law enforcement to prevent gun violence. They should be repealed.

In this new press release, Brady uses “ATF crime gun trace data” as a reliable source upon which to base their conclusion that:

Gun dealers in states with weak gun laws supply guns to criminals in other states at a rate more than five times higher than dealers in states with stronger gun laws, according to a Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence analysis of newly released ATF crime gun trace data. Apparently, the Brady Campaign has decided that law enforcement does have sufficient access to ATF trace data, and that this data helps Brady to “prevent gun violence” by citing it in their publications. The ATF data indicates that there appears to be few, if any, restrictions on trace requests.

In 2008, there were 245,691 total traces from U.S. law enforcement agencies, a 6.2% increase over the 231,421 trace requests in 2007.

Law enforcement submitted requests for a variety of reasons. Weapons possession was the most frequent: 63,281 or 25.8% of the total. There were 7,957 homicide-related requests (3.2%), 26,841 were drug-related (10.9%), 6,955 requests were tied to aggravated assaults (2.8%), and 4,901 (2.0%) were related to robberies.*

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[70th Division]

Well it is TRUE! But I consider a weak gun law one that doe NOT allow a person to be armed at all times.