The Data Are Pointing to One Major Driver of America’s Murder Spike

It looks like we'll be paying for the 2020 surge in gun sales with lives lost and families shattered for years to come.

"What’s most startling in these new data is the degree to which firearms purchased in 2020 featured in crimes committed in 2020. The ATF’s data set includes a measure known as the 'time to crime' of each gun traced—the time from when a firearm was legally purchased to when it was recovered after a crime. On this metric, an enormous shift is apparent: The number of traced guns whose time to crime was a year or more increased by less than 1 percent in 2020 compared with 2019, but the number of guns whose time to crime was six months or less increased by 90 percent."

Now more than ever it is time for our elected officials at the state and federal level to act to prevent gun violence, to expand background checks, to stop the proliferation of ghost guns and to mandate safe storage.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/gun-sales-murder-spike/621196/