Second - and here's the kicker. For that statement to be false, what paperwork does exist on that gun would have to never show it leaving the state of New York. So....
a) It would have to be manufactured in New York AND
b) It would have to be sent to distributors only in New York AND
c) It would have to be sent from the distributor to an FFL in New York AND
d) The gun could never have left New York via any legal transfer of ownership to other than a New York resident.
How many guns in New York City since 1968 can meet that pedigree requirement? Any gun not meeting that pedigree did, in fact, come from out of state in some manner. Which, we know, is completely meaningless when that fact is being used in the context in which it is.
It's worse than that. In all actuality, if the trace was not initiated in the same state that the firearm was originally sold at retail in then it's considered to be "trafficked" by His Excellency.
From MAIG's report (
http://www.tracetheguns.org/report.pdf, page 7):
When a gun is recovered from a crime scene, law enforcement can ask ATF to initiate a trace to identify the gun dealer who first sold the gun and the person who bought it. In the process, ATF identifies the state where the gun was first sold at retail (“source state”) and the state where the crime gun was recovered at a crime scene (“recovery state”).
In 2009, of the 238,107 guns that were recovered at crime scenes in the U.S. and submitted for tracing, ATF successfully identified the source states for 145,321 traced guns – or 61% of the attempted traces.
Interesting. So when Bloomberg claims 90% are from out of state he's really talking about 90% of 61%, gee this is starting to sound like Mexico all over again ...
He's not even 100% correct on the 90% claim, as we see at
https://www.atf.gov/sites/default/f...s/tracedata-2012/2012-trace-data-new-york.pdf on page 7. The ATF PIDed the "source state" on 4,850 traces, of those 1,552 were from inside NY. I guess his Excellency isn't the best at math (that's 32% of traces being from inside NY).
The reason I put "source state" in quotations is that pesky definition: "the gun dealer who first sold the gun and the person who bought it". In other words if someone moved, if they sold it later on (even through a 01 FFL), heck if they died and left it to an out of state relative in their will ... well that's a "trafficked" gun according to MAIG.
There's also this (
https://www.atf.gov/sites/default/f...s/tracedata-2012/2012-trace-data-new-york.pdf, page 2):
(1) Firearm traces are designed to assist las enforcement authorities in conducting investigations by tracking the sale and possession of specific firearms. Law enforcement agencies may request firearms traces for any reason, and those reasons are not necessarily reported to the Federal Government. Not all firearms used in crime are traced, and not all firearms traced are used in crime.
(2) Firearms selected for tracing are not chosen for purposes of determining which types, makes, or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes. The firearms selected do not constitutes a random sample and should not be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or any subset of that universe. Firearms are normally traced to the first retail seller, and sources reported for firearms traced do not necessarily represent the sources or methods by which firearms in general are acquired for use in crime.
These ATF trace reports are where MAIG are getting their numbers from. The ATF states right at the top of the report for each individual state though that not only are these not exactly 'crime guns', they're not even a representative sample.
You'll notice on page 6 of the ATF stats that the vast majority of these traces were possession charges, firearm under investigation, found firearm, drug charges, etc. Only 238 of the traces were related to firearms being sold (the ATF doesn't state it explicitly, but I'd assume they mean illegally sold), 209 assaults, 184 robberies, and 95 homicides.
The average 'Time to Crime' was 13.9 years (page 8) on these traces. Taken together with the stat that most of these traces were related to possession, and that 'out of state' means it wasn't originally sold at retail in NY; I don't think I'm going very far out on a limb if I guess that an awful lot of these "trafficked" guns fall under something similar to the following scenario: guy buys a shotgun in one state, later moves, decides to make a little extra cash by growing and/or dealing weed, the cops raid his place, find that shotgun in the closet, and send the serial # in to the ATF for a trace. Voila, we have a "trafficked" gun.
