Their guns fueled Chicago crime. When they broke the law, the ATF went easy – By Champe Barton (The Trace) / April 11, 2022
Chicago’s mayor identified gun stores whose wares consistently wound up in city crimes. ATF records show the agency had been lenient on them.
This story was produced in partnership with The Trace, with additional reporting by Brian Freskos.
Over the last two decades, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives let some of the Midwest’s most notorious gun sellers off the hook for serious violations of federal law, including selling to straw purchasers, transferring guns without background checks and doctoring sales records.
The Trace, a nonprofit newsroom, and USA TODAY obtained ATF inspection records for 13 gun dealers singled out by the city of Chicago as suppliers of a disproportionate number of guns used in city crimes. The records show the agency found more than 120 violations of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 at these stores. Only one store passed its inspection with no violations.
In 2017, on the heels of a record-breaking surge in homicides in Chicago, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel published a sweeping Gun Trace Report, which identified the sellers of thousands of guns recovered by Chicago police between 2013 and 2016. It showed nearly 1 in 4 guns picked up by city police came from just 10 stores located across Illinois and northern Indiana. The top three stores together accounted for some 2,000 crime guns.
