(1) Firearms traces are designed to assist law enforcement authorities in conducting investigations by trafficking the sale and possession of specific firearms. Law enforcement agencies may requires 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 determining which types, makes or models of firearms are used for illicit purposes. The firearms selected do not constitute 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 trace 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.
Also the typical "time to crime" is on the 10-12 YEAR range, and most crime guns are traced back to the same state they are recovered in.
That is all for now...
