The Missing Fingerprints at Crime Scenes

It’s no secret that the current presidential administration has a more pro-gun orientation than the last. Just a few weeks into his second term, President Donald Trump disbanded the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and ordered the attorney general to review a huge swath of federal regulations with the goal of prioritizing Second Amendment rights. A pillar in this executive branch’s pro-gun shift, which is only nine months in the making, is the deregulation of the gun industry. Already, the Trump administration has diverted thousands of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearm and Explosives (ATF) agents to work at other agencies or on nonfirearm issues, such as immigration enforcement. Trump’s Department of Justice has settled enforcement actions against makers of machine gun conversion devices, effectively legalizing devices that the federal government used to outlaw. The administration has also repealed a Biden-area ATF policy that empowered the agency to revoke gun dealer licenses after one serious willful violation of federal law. The current ATF is even abandoning a decades-old program to identify and monitor gun dealers that sell notably high numbers of guns recovered from crime scenes.

Against this backdrop, policymakers who believe there’s a need for stronger gun safety rules in America should look for new ways to impose and enforce regulations on gun manufacturers, distributors, marketers and dealers. Industry regulation — not just controlling the behavior of individual consumers — is a critical tool in policymaking that has curbed other public health crises. For example, in addition to licensing drivers, we force car companies to make cars safer. We both set age minimums for cigarette purchases and prohibit tobacco companies from marketing to kids. In addition to criminalizing the possession of narcotics, we limit prescription opioid production. We have learned from these other contexts that the solution does not lie in perfecting the behavior of hundreds of millions of individuals, but in restraining the industries profiting from the crisis itself. States can take inspiration from these approaches when it comes to combating gun violence within their borders.

Obstacles to federal firearm industry regulation

To be clear, better state regulation of the gun industry was a worthy project long before President Donald Trump began his second term, and indeed, many states have passed laws that exceed federal rules on gun dealers and firearm manufacturers. Part of the reason our gun violence crisis is so sprawling and enduring is because the federal government has not sufficiently regulated the gun industry, often in response to advocacy from the gun industry itself. 

For example, guns are clearly consumer products. But in 1976, the National Rifle Association successfully lobbied to forever keep firearms out of the purview of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. As a result, there is no federal agency that can force a recall of firearms that malfunction, like firing when dropped. 

Most importantly, the ATF has never had the resources or legislative authority necessary to thwart or punish gun industry malfeasance. A 2023 DOJ audit of the ATF found that the agency doesn’t monitor or reprimand many gun dealers that violate federal rules and regulations, tasks at the core of its duties. At the behest of the gun lobby, Congress has also prohibited the ATF from adopting practices that experts believe would make the tracing of crime guns speedy and effective. At times, the federal government has even stepped in to stop states and local governments from taking actions against gun companies. In response to public nuisance lawsuits that dozens of cities and counties (and one state) brought against gunmakers, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005 to try to close the door on those cases and protect gun dealers and manufacturers from many kinds of civil liability claims in the future.

There are already about 400 million firearms in circulation nationwide, and gun companies make and sell around 10 million more every year for the U.S. market. In the absence of sufficient federal regulation, gun companies achieve this volume of business in concerning ways. Gun manufacturers have put more focus into making high-margin assault weapons like the AR-15, roughly doubling their production in the 10 years following the Sandy Hook mass shooting in 2012. Now, law enforcement officers encounter AR-15-type weapons in more than half of the public mass shooting incidents to which they respond. Gun retailers fail to secure their inventory, and ATF data confirm that thousands of guns lost by or stolen from dealers end up recovered from crime scenes. Companies that market firearms target youth, even though children under 18 years old can’t legally buy firearms from federally licensed dealers. The gun industry eschews product safety innovations that could prevent children or unauthorized users from firing a gun. Every year, hundreds of children get their hands on household firearms and unintentionally shoot or kill themselves or other children. 

Luckily, many tools are available to state governments that want to involve gun manufacturers, retailers and marketers in the project of reducing gun deaths. Some states are already implementing these policies, but in a crisis of this scale, there is always more to do.

Regulating manufacturers

Behind the front lines of the gun violence epidemic are companies driven first by the desire to make more money. For example, gun manufacturers are making increasingly lethal firearms that lack any safety features — and instead have combat-level capabilities — rather than firearms commonly used for self-defense or hunting.

It might seem counterintuitive to demand that firearms be “less lethal,” but amid the current gun industry trend of pushing military-style weapons, policymakers should ask: How dangerous do we want guns to be, and should gun companies be able to make a gun’s unmitigated lethality its central selling point? 

States should begin by accepting that some firearms and firearm accessories are just too dangerous to make for and sell to civilians. They should prohibit the manufacturing and sale of assault weapons like the AR-15 and high-capacity magazines, which cause unique devastation to victims’ bodies and can overpower police forces. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting in 2012, gun companies have made over $11 billion from making and selling AR-15-style rifles. Those guns now make up a quarter of all firearms produced each year, and some gun manufacturers have tripled their revenue on sales of these rifles alone. We’re seeing the fruits of the manufacturers’ focus on these kinds of guns, as assault weapons are now recovered in hundreds of shootings a year.

States should begin by accepting that some firearms and firearm accessories are just too dangerous to make for and sell to civilians. They should prohibit the manufacturing and sale of assault weapons like the AR-15 and high-capacity magazines, which cause unique devastation to victims’ bodies and can overpower police forces. Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting in 2012, gun companies have made over $11 billion from making and selling AR-15-style rifles. Those guns now make up a quarter of all firearms produced each year, and some gun manufacturers have tripled their revenue on sales of these rifles alone. We’re seeing the fruits of the manufacturers’ focus on these kinds of guns, as assault weapons are now recovered in hundreds of shootings a year.

Policymakers should force gun companies to focus their product design on what they say is the central reason for gun ownership: safe and lawful self-defense. What if gun companies actually had to make safer guns? Guns that told you when a round was in the chamber so you couldn’t mistake it to be unloaded? Or guns that couldn’t be fired by anyone but the owner, thanks to biometric technology? California and Massachusetts have already required many handguns to have chamber load indicators or magazine disconnects, and California is even preparing to force handgun makers to cure a design flaw that enables shooters to easily convert pistols into machine guns. Forcing this innovation toward safety has precedence in the opioid context, where the Food and Drug Administration encouraged the development of opioid medications that are chemically modified to deter abuse and addiction.

Reining in marketers

Every year, gun companies spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising to create demand for firearms, even though there are already more guns in circulation than there are Americans. In such a saturated market, gun advertising has some extreme elements, such as militaristic imagery and suggestions that firearms are an essential component of manhood. While advertising doesn’t seek to directly put guns into the hands of people with felony records, the gun industry’s aggressive approach has put firearm advertisements in front of an estimated 80% of boys between the ages of 10 and 17.

Gun marketers pursue this “consumer” base even though children under the age of 18 can’t even legally buy guns from federally licensed dealers. Documents released in the Sandy Hook litigation revealed that Remington used several strategies to solidify young consumers’ interest in their AR-15-style guns before they turned 16. One gunmaker has even made a kid-friendly “JR-15.” Over the decades, governments have addressed tobacco marketing to kids by outlawing the use of cartoons, advertising on television and radio, and sponsorships of sporting events. 

State lawmakers could pass laws that take a similar approach for firearms, like the federal Protecting Kids from Gun Marketing Act. Illinois’ consumer protection law prohibits gun advertising that encourages youth to unlawfully acquire or use firearms. Lawmakers should also encourage social media platforms like YouTube to improve their policies and practices so as not to serve up firearms content to young users. 

Inspecting and overseeing gun dealers

There are more than 78,000 federally licensed gun dealers in the United States, and some of these businesses are a significant source of crime guns. The ATF’s own data and reporting show that gun dealers often don’t follow the federal rules already in place to prevent illegal gun sales and thefts. These failures are part of the reason why 70% of recovered crime guns are traced back to dealers. Federal law requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks on every sale, but in 2023, dealers finalized over 20,000 sales without finishing the check. Notably, the ATF trace data show that more than 80,000 firearms sold by FFLs in 2023 were recovered from crime scenes that same year. (The agency considers a “time-to-crime” of less than one year to be a very strong indicator of gun trafficking. Generally, around 20% of traced crime guns were bought less than a year before their recovery.) Gun dealers are also supposed to report lost and stolen firearms from their inventory to federal law enforcement, but they sometimes don’t. A federal audit confirmed that gun dealers largely avoid the legally prescribed consequences for these kinds of violations, such as dealer license suspension or revocation. Even in administrations that prioritize gun safety, federal law enforcement has never had the capacity to inspect all licensed gun dealers (in the Biden administration, there were an estimated 180 federally licensed dealers per every ATF inspector), nor the willingness to sanction gun dealers that flout essential public safety laws. States should require, at a minimum, that licensed gun dealers follow the laws and regulations that already exist.

The next step is to impose sensible requirements on dealers that are bafflingly absent from federal regulations. Every year, around 15,000 firearms are lost or stolen from licensed gun dealers. Between 2017 and 2021, over 14,000 such firearms were recovered from crime scenes, according to ATF data. But federal law doesn’t require gun dealers to secure their premises or their firearm inventory. For comparison, our federal regulations dedicate multiple paragraphs to the storage and access control of methadone. People can get a federal license to sell firearms without ever having to install bars on the windows of their business, use video surveillance systems, lock up firearms in a safe at night or install alarms that warn of burglary, even though the leading gun industry trade group recommends many of these practices. Illinois has already seen a tremendous reduction in thefts from licensed gun dealers — a decline of 90% — after state lawmakers required gun dealers to install video surveillance systems and resourced compliance inspections beginning in 2021.

States can even require gun dealers to get a state-specific business license, even though the ATF already licenses gun retailers. Twelve states — including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Washington and Colorado — already require gun dealers to get a state license in order to sell firearms of all types. Business licensing is commonplace nationwide, and many states license hairdressers, cannabis dispensers and restaurants. By creating dealer licensing regimes, states can empower their own agencies and law enforcement departments to enforce dealer regulations that work best for the state and are likely more extensive than the floor of dealer regulation at the federal level. As a condition of the dealer license, states can require gun dealers to train employees on identifying straw purchasers and refusing suspicious sales. Across the nation, some bad-apple gun dealers are selling multiple firearms to the same person, only for law enforcement to soon trace dozens of crime guns back to that purchaser. For example, one man in Albuquerque was caught supplying guns to a gang after buying dozens of firearms from just three local gun shops over the span of five months. While the buyers at the counter might be able to pass a background check, dealers often have good reason to suspect that these guns are meant for people with criminal records.

States with gun dealer licensing schemes can put bad-apple gun dealers out of business before straw-purchased guns are trafficked and used in dozens of shootings. States that require gun dealers to obtain a state license to operate have the power to inspect gun dealers for compliance and revoke licensing, thereby shutting down stores that are significant suppliers of crime guns. Across the country, states with strong dealer regulations are seeing gun trafficking reductions up to 64%, as well as significant reductions in homicide rates.

The way forward

States like New York and California have already adopted many of the firearm industry regulations described above and will need little further encouragement to continue those efforts. On the opposite end of the spectrum, many of these proposals will likely be nonstarters in states that don’t even require background checks on firearm purchases or concealed carry permits. But policymakers in political environments between these two extremes can still pursue gun industry regulations that work for their constituencies, and it is a particularly worthwhile endeavor in the face of the second Trump administration’s steadfast commitment to gun deregulation.