Who sells the most weapons used in crimes? List of gun stores published.
The federal government is reviewing gun stores that sell most firearms used in crimes with a list of stores that have sold weapons used in crimes.
The federal government has tightened its controls on gun shops that sell weapons used in crimes. The number of selected stores has more than doubled in the last four years.
Which gun stores sell the most crime weapons has been kept secret for more than two decades, since 2003 under the George W. Bush administration. But a USA TODAY Freedom of Information Act request shed some light on them, showing that the vast majority of guns used in crimes are sold by a small fraction of America's gun shops.
The more than 1,300 outlets the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is targeting by 2023 include many of the largest sellers – Bass Pro Shops and Cabela's, Rural King and Sportsman's Warehouse – as well as some lesser-known stores, such as Town Guns in Richmond, Virginia, and Ammo Bros. in Ontario, California.
There are also gun stores linked to recent high-profile mass shootings, including River City Firearms in Louisville, Kentucky, which sold the AR-15 rifle used to kill five people and wound several others last spring, and Bud's Guns in Lexington, Kentucky. which sold the rifle used in the July 4 shooting in Highland Park that left seven people dead and 30 others injured.
Bass Pro Shops in Denver, which sold a Glock handgun and a Remington shotgun implicated in the mass shooting at an Aurora theater nearly 12 years ago, also appeared on the latest version of the list.
None of these stores or their corporate offices responded to requests for comment. But the main gun store lobby criticized the list's release as part of the Biden administration's “name and shame” campaign, which targeted gun stores rather than focusing on criminals.
Publishing business names is “inappropriate and counterproductive,” said Larry Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. He asked whether ATF had violated the law by doing so.
“When stores are publicly named and there are negative articles that suggest they are bad guys,” Keane said, “they will no longer want to cooperate with the ATF as they have in the past.”
The criteria for inclusion on the list is relatively simple: at least 25 guns that have been found to have committed a crime within a year and that were purchased within the last three years. In law enforcement parlance, it is known as “time to crime.” A short period of time is an indicator of illegal arms trafficking.
At the urging of the gun lobby, the Trump administration increased that threshold from 10 in 2018.
Addition to the list adds another level of scrutiny by the ATF: stores must submit additional quarterly reports on used firearm purchases to uncover the secondary market for weapons used in crimes.
But it's also a warning to these stores: Criminals are targeting you for gun trafficking and straw buying – people who are legally prohibited from buying firearms will hire a backup buyer.
Tips to stay off the list: Gun control groups say small changes can stem the flow of illegal gun trafficking
Gun violence prevention groups, which have pushed for greater accountability of gun stores for years, said the release of the list was intended to incentivize stores to distance themselves from the list.
“It is clear that you are being targeted by traffickers for some reason,” said Josh Scharff, Brady’s legal counsel. “A responsible business owner would say, 'I don't want to supply the criminal market, so I'm not in this business.'”
ATF tracks criminal weapons back to the initial purchase
The ATF is responsible for tracking down criminal weapons – collecting the make, model and serial number and searching records to find the chain from the manufacturer to the first retail outlet – to help police solve a crime.
ATF officials are quick to note that being placed on the “Demand 2” list is not in itself an indication of wrongdoing. The stores and pawn shops participating in the program represent about 3% of the approximately 80,000 licensees nationwide.
“A number of factors, including geography, sales volume, secondary market transfers by an original legitimate buyer and the level of sophistication of gun dealers, can play a role in a crime weapon being recovered,” ATF spokeswoman Kristina Mastropasqua wrote in an email.
Not much is public about the origins of criminal weapons, largely due to the efforts of the gun lobby and a key congressional constitutional amendment called Tiahrt.
Named after former Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., the 2003 law prohibits the ATF from sharing the trace data with researchers, members of the public or even city and state officials not directly involved in the program.
The obscure program Demand 2 provides a window. The 24-year-old program came to public attention last April after Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., brought it up at a House subcommittee meeting with ATF Director Steven Dettelbach.
Clyde questioned whether firearms traces are actually “bona fide” crimes, since many tracing requests from local law enforcement to the ATF and ultimately to gun sellers involve guns found or stolen by police or from individuals who are prohibited from owning firearms.
What he didn't mention was that one of the two gun shops he owns, Clyde's Armory in Athens, Georgia, was given the additional Demand 2 inspection after selling more than 25 guns since 2020 that were later attributed to crimes The Times subsequently reported in August.
His business also appears on the 2023 list provided to USA TODAY. Representatives from Clyde's congressional office referred all questions to his campaign office, which declined to comment on the ATF program or his listing.
Bass Pro, Dunham's and Scheels are high volume gun sellers
The list itself largely reflects the country's largest gun sellers – but advocates say weighting time-to-crime helps mitigate the impact of volume alone.
Bass Pro Shops has 49 stores on the list – nearly a third of its stores, including Cabela's, in the United States. Other major retailers: Turner's Outdoorsman (64% of stores), Scheels (59%), Rural King (26%) and Sportman's Warehouse (21%), Dunham's Sports (10%).
None of these companies responded to requests for comment.
Mark Tosh, president of a gun store chain in Virginia, speculated that any retailer that sells more than 2,000 guns a year would appear on the list.
“It’s the law of averages,” he said.
Town Gun Shop locations in Richmond and Collinsville, Virginia, are on the ATF list. Tosh blamed this on high sales volume and decades of business activity. The two stores, he said, together sell thousands of guns annually. He also expressed no concerns about cooperating with the ATF in searching for criminal weapons.
“We believe that when you purchase a firearm you are a law-abiding citizen with good intentions,” he said. “It doesn’t always work that way, so we don’t mind doing our part to trace firearms. It’s priority No. 1 when the search center calls.”
Stopping straw buyers is a challenge, he said, noting that his staff recently reported a buyer for whom law enforcement had made three consecutive trace requests.
“I had a conversation with this man, thanked him for his business, but said we had to protect him, our employees and our store and would not sell to him anymore,” Tosh said. “I personally train my 24 employees to look for straw sales, and everyone has the authority to cancel a sale.”
The ATF's most recent nationwide gun tracing analysis found that handguns were by far the type of weapon most commonly linked to crime, accounting for about three-quarters of those, as opposed to rifles, revolvers or shotguns. That likely explains some of the notable omissions from the Demand 2 list, like Walmart, which stopped selling handguns in 1993 before also stopping selling some rifles like the AR-15 in 2019.
The most common pistol manufacturers found to have committed crimes are Glock, Smith & Wesson, Taurus and Sturm Ruger, which account for more than half of the pistols investigated. Overall, the Glock 9mm pistol is the most commonly tracked firearm, with nearly 130,000 firearms traced to crimes between 2017 and 2021.
More generally, Keane — along with the gun industry lobby — said the Demand 2 program is an effective tool for regulators to track down more used guns. He said the industry is doing its part, pointing to the National Shooting Sports Foundation's long-running “Don't Lie for the Other Guy” campaign to prevent straw buying, as well as educating members on best practices.
But publishing the Demand 2 list was misleading, he said.
“The fact that you're on the program doesn't mean you're a bad dealer or anything. It just means you fit within the parameters,” Keane said. “No one in the retail chain knows exactly why a firearm is traced, it’s just that it was traced.”
Nick Penzenstadler is a reporter on USA TODAY's investigative team. Contact him at [email protected] or @npenzenstadler or via Signal at (720) 507-5273.