The Trace Dives Into Gun Circulation
Updated gun sales data available now.
In late January, The Trace published two stories: one about plummeting firearm sales and another about the unrelenting quagmire of untraceable, homemade guns.
—
[Gun Sales Are Plummeting. Here’s Why]
[The Ghost Gun Market’s Vanishing Act]
—
Between 2017 and 2023, police recovered more than 92,000 ghost guns, reported Champe Barton and Jennifer Mascia in a story co-published with Rolling Stone.
In that same time period, traditional gun sales spiked in 2020 — the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic — but have since fallen precipitously to levels almost as low as in 2017, Chip Brownlee found.
With the Spring 2025 launch of the Gun Violence Data Hub’s data library, we’ll be providing the tables and charts for any reporter to observe these trends on their own. Additionally, we’ll be carving out localizable slices of the data at state, county, and even more granular levels where possible.
In the meantime, you can already explore some of the sales data at The Trace’s tracker. It provides downloadable tables, broken out by state, from January 2000 to December 2024.
If you want help using this data, or have questions about reporting on or researching gun violence in your area, reach out via the Data Hub’s Help Desk, and someone will be in touch within a few business days.