Time to crime statistics cast doubt on doj gun trafficking claims

An article in the Washington Free Beacon discusses the 15 year time-to-crime (TTC) statistic that casts significant doubt on DOJ claims regarding firearms trafficking along the southwest border. Time-to-crime refers to the period of time between original purchase of a firearm and the recovery of that firearm by law enforcement. The document obtained by the Beacon comes from ATF and was produced as part of the court record in the 2011 case National Shooting Sports Foundation v. Jones – a lawsuit filed by the NSSF and two NRA-funded firearms retailers challenging ATF’s legal authority to impose a multiple sales reporting requirement on 8,700 firearms retailers in Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona. A 15 year TTC, which has actually gone up since 2008, when then ATF Deputy Director Billy Hoover disclosed to NSSF that the average TTC for firearms recovered in Mexico was 14 years, demonstrates that these guns were not recently purchased in the United States. If there’s “a flood of American firearms” headed across the border, as some in DOJ claim, it’s moving at a glacial pace.