Everytown for Gun Safety is out with a new report claiming licensed gun dealers are fueling firearm trafficking in America. My colleague, Tom Knighton covered the initial releaseof the report for our VIP readers. If you only read the headlines, you might picture backroom deals, complicit store owners, and gun-shop counters functioning as cartel hand-off points. But once the rhetoric is stripped away, what remains is not a researched indictment — but a narrative built on implication.
In short, the Everytown report offers carefully selected data and anecdotes — leaving enormous gaps which they hope their reader will “fill in”. It packages lawful commerce and illicit trafficking under the same umbrella, using evocative language and sharp analogies for political effect. For readers and policymakers who own guns, operate gun stores, or support the constitutional right to bear arms, the findings should be viewed with skepticism: by conflating the legal and illegal, the report risks undermining lawful behavior without demonstrating a reliable path to stopping real criminals.
Let’s walk through their argument.
Everytown highlights the fact that crime guns trace back to licensed dealer sales — a statistical inevitability given that virtually every lawfully manufactured firearm enters the market through a licensed dealer. From that starting point, they jump to suggesting the gun industry is “a key actor” in trafficking and that dealers profit substantially from it. That sounds dramatic. But their evidence doesn’t establish what the rhetoric asserts.
Trace Data Is Not Proof of Complicity
The report notes more than two million guns traced in crimes over six years were originally sold by dealers. That is a data point. But it is not evidence of dealer wrongdoing.
A traced firearm tells us where a gun first entered lawful commerce, not who later misused it — just as police knowing a car was purchased at a Ford dealership does not make the dealer responsible for the teenager who later stole it and ran red lights.
On the surface, these data points — drawn from nonfictional traces and investigations — give the impression that the legal supply chain is being exploited. But on closer inspection, the report fails to substantiate the leap from “these guns originally came from a dealer” to “this dealer knowingly profited from, or facilitated, criminal trafficking.”
Everytown concedes that firearms enter the criminal market primarily through straw purchases, unlicensed sellers, and theft. These are illegal acts committed after the original sale — not by dealers themselves. Yet instead of focusing on the criminals responsible, the report spends its energy implying the dealer was part of the scheme.
The “Drug Trafficking” Comparison Is Worse Than Dishonest — It’s Absurd
Everytown writes:
“Unlike drug trafficking, which starts with underground labs and clandestine distribution networks, gun trafficking begins at a well-lit gun store … with at least the veneer of legality.”
That sentence alone reads like something crafted for political fundraising, not serious policy analysis. Drug trafficking is clandestine precisely because no aspect of the drug supply chain is lawful. Everytown’s report offers a veneer of data-driven analysis. But beneath the charts lies a predictable narrative: Lawful gun commerce is the problem, not criminals. That claim is unsupported, logically flawed, and politically convenient — but it does nothing to stop trafficking. Firearm commerce, by contrast, proceeds through:
- Federally licensed dealers
- ATF-issued licenses
- Form 4473 paperwork
- NICS background checks
- Records audits
- Traceability built into regulation
A gun dealer does not occupy the same moral or legal position as a fentanyl producer, no matter how clever the rhetorical analogy. Pretending otherwise insults millions of responsible gun owners, retailers, and the agency tasked with regulating them.
A Headline Number Meant for Shock Value — Not Policy
Everytown claims licensed dealers “earned” roughly $695 million from guns later used in crimes. But that number represents nothing more than the retail value of firearms later traced — not profits derived from wrongdoing.
No one at Everytown even attempts to prove that:
- those guns were sold to traffickers knowingly,
- dealers saw suspicious behavior and ignored it, or
- profit motive influenced misconduct.
It could just as easily be said that Walmart “earned millions” from fentanyl overdoses because someone who eventually OD’d once bought groceries there.
This is the kind of argumentative sleight-of-hand that should make any critical thinker wary.
What the Report Doesn’t Tell You — Because It Can’t
If Everytown truly had evidence that gun dealers knowingly facilitated trafficking, it would cite:
- the number of dealers criminally charged,
- how many lost licenses,
- how many were found willfully negligent, or
- how many knowingly sold to prohibited buyers.
Instead, those details are absent. That absence matters. Without those numbers, sweeping claims about “gun dealers fueling trafficking” rest not on proof but on insinuation — the same error that has plagued decades of anti-gun messaging.
Why the report’s “profit motive” narrative misses the point
Everytown’s $695 million estimate is presented as evidence that dealers financially benefit from trafficking. But that number is simply the aggregated retail value of guns once traced to crimes — not profits derived from illicit sales or evidence of knowingly complicit behavior.
Indeed, the report offers no data on dealer profit margins, discounting for unsold inventory, buybacks, theft loss, returns — nothing that would connect the $695 million figure to real-world earnings on guns trafficked illegally. Without that, the headline number is not a business-case analysis but a provocative talking point.
This is especially important for gun owners that value responsibly run gun stores and respect due process: painting all dealers with the same “profiteer of crime” brush undermines legitimate businesses and constitutional commerce, without distinguishing between negligent or complicit dealers and law-abiding ones.
The Real Culprits Aren’t Working Behind Counters — They’re Working Around Them
If advocates actually wanted to reduce gun trafficking, their recommendations would target:
- straw purchasers,
- unlicensed sellers,
- organized theft rings, and
- repeat offenders with short time-to-crime traces.
Interestingly, these are already the focus of federal enforcement — and when the ATF identifies unscrupulous dealers, those cases are investigated and prosecuted. But you wouldn’t know that from Everytown’s publication, because “we already enforce these laws” doesn’t generate donations.
Why This Narrative Matters to You
If you’re reading this on BearingArms.com, you likely already understand the stakes. The goal is not better enforcement — it’s policy built on suspicion, not evidence. Talk of “well-lit gun stores” being cartel fronts lays the groundwork for:
- liability expansions targeting lawful dealers,
- increased regulatory burdens designed to force closures,
- political pressure on banks to deny services, and
- renewed attempts to undermine PLCAA protections.
Everytown’s narrative isn’t about trafficking. It’s about recasting legal commerce as inherently suspect so political actors can justify treating lawful gun dealers like bad actors.
Let’s Have the Honest Conversation They Avoided
If anyone — dealer or customer — knowingly participates in trafficking, prosecute them. But statistics showing a gun once passed through a dealer do not justify treating thousands of small business owners as complicit criminals. Real reform begins where crime actually occurs:
- improve prosecution of straw buyers,
- enforce trafficking laws already on the books,
- stop the plea-bargain culture that returns repeat offenders to the street, and
- expand coordinated interdiction targeting organized illegal sellers.
That approach might not generate the same emotion as accusing “well-lit gun stores” of running pipelines to crime rings — but it has the advantage of being true.
Editor’s Note: The gun control lobby, with the help of the mainstream media, continues to lie about gun owners and the Second Amendment.
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