I noticed that a few folks are covering the article in Parade that appeared last week. Of course, the best rebuttal I can offer to these claims by a reporter, who clearly didn’t bother to do any research beyond Brady Campaign talking points, is from the ATF itself:
Firearms selected for tracing are not chosen for purposes of 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 traced to the first retails 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.
That’s what the ATF says, in bold print, on the second page right before the present the data they collect on tracing trends. Of course, that doesn’t stop people from doing exactly what the ATF says shouldn’t be done with the data.