Where Crime Guns Come From: What Federal Data Says About Gun Shows

Ask how often gun shows figure in federal crime-gun data and you can get four different answers: 0.8 percent, 3 percent, 3.0 percent or 13.9 percent. All four come from the Bureau of Justice Statistics or ATF, and none of them is a misprint. They answer four different questions, put to different people, about different years. The useful skill is knowing which question each number was asked.

Four numbers, three kinds of federal records

BJS interviewed prisoners about how they got the gun they had during their offense. ATF traces follow a recovered crime gun back to the licensed dealer who first sold it. ATF trafficking studies record which channels turned up in the cases its agents built. Each report spells out its own limits, and those limits are the key to reading the gap between 0.8 and 13.9.

The prison survey: 0.8 percent, in prisoners’ own words

The lowest figure comes from Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016, published by BJS in January 2019 (NCJ 251776). Per the full report, 24,848 state and federal prisoners at 364 prisons took part in face-to-face interviews between January and October 2016.

About 21 percent of state prisoners and 20 percent of federal prisoners said they possessed a gun during their offense. Of those, the BJS summary says: “Fewer than 1% had obtained the firearm at a gun show (0.8%).” BJS’s highlights add that 90 percent of them did not get the gun from a retail source.

Those are Table 5’s all-prisoner figures; the gun-show share was 0.8 percent for state prisoners and 1.4 percent for federal. Two details matter. BJS files gun shows under “retail source,” defined as “a gun shop or store, pawn shop, flea market, or gun show.” That is a place, not a kind of seller, so the table doesn’t say whether the seller at the show was licensed. And prisoners could name more than one source, so the rows “may not sum to totals.”

Following the Gun: 13.9 percent of trafficking cases, 1996 to 1998

The larger number is older and measures something else. In June 2000, ATF, then part of the Treasury Department, published Following the Gun: Enforcing Federal Laws Against Firearms Traffickers. It reviewed 1,530 trafficking investigations that ATF initiated from July 1996 through December 1998 (NCJ 183786, per the Justice Department library abstract), and their targets “diverted a total of 84,128 firearms from legal to illegal commerce.”

Straw purchasing led the channels, in 709 investigations (46.3 percent), followed by unlicensed sellers at 314 (20.5 percent). “Trafficking in firearms at gun shows and flea markets” appeared in 212, or 13.9 percent. The 198 of those with a known gun count accounted for 25,862 firearms, an average of 130.6 per case, and the executive summary called gun shows “a major trafficking channel, involving the second highest number of trafficked guns per investigation.”

The report supplies its own caveats. Investigations could fall into more than one category, and 60 cases with an unknown gun count are left out of the volume table. On regional patterns, the authors wrote that “it is not possible to know whether regional differences reflect differences in investigative practice, in the illegal market, or both.” The denominator is cases ATF opened, not guns recovered at crime scenes.

The NFCTA: 3 percent of traces, 3.0 percent of trafficking cases

ATF’s National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment (NFCTA) returned to the question with 2017 to 2021 data in two volumes.

Volume II (2023): crime gun traces

NFCTA Volume II, announced by the Justice Department on February 1, 2023, covers crime guns. Law enforcement agencies submitted 1,922,577 of them for tracing from 2017 through 2021. Under the heading “Crime Guns Acquired from an FFL at a Gun Show,” Part III reports: “Between 2017 and 2021, only 3% (41,810) of the 1,482,861 crime guns traced to a purchaser were acquired from FFLs at a gun show.”

ATF then qualifies its own number. The figure “does not represent the total percentage of recovered crime guns that were sold at a gun show,” the report says, because private citizens and unlicensed dealers also sell at shows, and “National data, however, are not available on unregulated firearm transfers at gun shows.” A trace runs from a licensed dealer to the first retail purchaser. A private sale at a later show doesn’t appear in it.

Volume III (2024): trafficking investigations

NFCTA Volume III, released in April 2024, covers 9,708 closed ATF trafficking investigations initiated from 2017 through 2021. Per ATF’s announcement, they documented nearly 230,000 trafficked firearms in 7,779 cases. Agents identified at least one channel in 8,373 cases, which Part III tallies in Table FTC-02. Unlicensed dealing by a private person led with 3,404 cases (40.7 percent), then straw purchasers with 3,305 (39.5 percent). “Trafficking in firearms at gun shows, flea markets, or auctions” appeared in 250 cases, or 3.0 percent, and ranged from 2.2 percent in 2020 to 3.5 percent in 2017 and 2021.

The volume’s summary chapter adds scale. Gun-show cases were relatively few, ATF writes, but along with cases involving FFL traffickers they “were associated with the highest mean numbers of trafficked firearms per investigation”: 59 for gun shows and 57 for FFL traffickers. Two caveats apply throughout. The channel categories “are not mutually exclusive,” and ATF’s legacy case system “was designed to capture key investigative actions rather than collect data suitable for academic research,” so agents reviewed the files by hand.

Why the numbers differ: the side-by-side

Lined up side by side, the four figures ask different questions, count different things (prisoners, traced guns, investigations) and come from different decades and methods. A percentage of cases is not a percentage of guns.

What the data can’t tell you

Each number has blind spots, and they don’t all point the same way.

• The prison survey hears only from people sentenced to state or federal prison, and only about how they themselves got the gun. A gun bought at a show and later handed to a prisoner by a friend or a street seller would be recorded under the friend or the street. Answers are self-reported, and BJS excluded the 10.3 percent of state and 14.1 percent of federal gun-possessing prisoners who were missing answers on source or method.
• The trafficking studies count cases ATF opened, group gun shows with flea markets (and, in the NFCTA, auctions), and let one case count toward several channels at once.
• The trace figure sees licensed-dealer sales only, and only for guns police recover and submit for tracing.

“Gun show” is a place, not a type of sale

Two tables at the same show can operate under different rules. Among licensed dealers, ATF’s NFCTA says, only those licensed in the show’s state may transfer firearms there, and their transfers “are documented on the ATF Form 4473.” Under 18 U.S.C. 922(t), a licensee generally must contact the national background check system before transferring a gun to an unlicensed buyer. For private sellers, ATF notes that, “unless prohibited by state law,” unlicensed individuals who aren’t engaged in the business may sell at shows. Transfers between unlicensed persons in the same state “are not covered by the recordkeeping or the background check provisions of the GCA,” the Congressional Research Service explains. Our private sale vs. FFL basics guide covers how the states differ. For how show selling looked a generation earlier, see gun show dealers from 1968 to 1984.

Where people land

Advocacy groups often lead with different federal numbers. The NRA Institute for Legislative Action, a gun-rights group, cites BJS on its background-check fact page: “Less than one percent get guns at gun shows.” Giffords Law Center, a gun-control group, cites the NFCTA on its gun-show page: gun shows, flea markets and auctions accounted for 3 percent of trafficking cases “but were associated with the highest mean number of firearms trafficked per investigation.” Both cite federal reports; they emphasize different measures.

What this means at the show table

None of these datasets changes the rules at an actual table. Whichever show you pick from the calendar, the federal rules travel with you and the state rules depend on where the show is held.

The prohibited-person rule covers every seller. Under 18 U.S.C. 922(d), it is unlawful “for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe” the buyer falls into a prohibited category. “Any person” includes private sellers. The categories include people under indictment for, or convicted of, a crime punishable by more than a year in prison; fugitives; unlawful drug users; and people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, among others.

Out-of-state buyers go through a dealer. ATF’s best-practices guide for private sellers (ATF P 5300.21, January 2013) states: “An unlicensed individual is prohibited from directly transferring a firearm to a person residing in another State.” It also suggests checking the buyer’s ID to confirm in-state residence and using a licensed dealer for the transfer, since “the FFL will be responsible for conducting a background check.” State and local law decide the rest: the show’s state determines whether a private sale needs a background check or a permit, so check before the show, not at the table.

Don’t lie for the other guy. A straw purchase, as ATF puts it, “occurs when an individual buys a firearm for a person who is not legally allowed to purchase or own one.” ATF lists penalties of up to 15 years in prison and fines of up to $250,000. Per NSSF, the Don’t Lie for the Other Guy campaign “was developed by NSSF and ATF in 2000.” Straw purchasing ranked near the top in both ATF trafficking studies: 46.3 percent of cases in 1996 to 1998 and 39.5 percent in 2017 to 2021.

1. Know which kind of table you’re at. A licensed dealer means Form 4473 and a background check; a private table follows the show state’s rules, so look them up before you go.
2. Buy only for yourself or as a genuine gift; Form 4473 asks whether you are the actual buyer. If a stranger asks you to buy for them, walk away.
3. Selling privately? Check the buyer’s ID and confirm in-state residence.
4. If anything gives you reasonable cause to believe the buyer is prohibited, stop. Section 922(d) applies to private sellers too.
5. Out-of-state buyer, or any doubt at all: route the sale through a licensed dealer.
6. Keep a written record with the serial number; ATF’s guide points to its Personal Firearms Record, ATF P 3312.8.

Buying? Our first handgun guide and used gun inspection guide cover the rest.

About this data

Every figure here comes from the documents linked above, chiefly the BJS report, summary and highlights; ATF’s June 2000 report; NFCTA Volume II, Part III; NFCTA Volume III, Parts III and XI; and ATF and Justice Department announcements. Percentages appear as published, not recalculated. The advocacy pages are quoted only to show how each side frames the data. The four gun-show figures measure different things and shouldn’t be averaged, added or ranked against each other. No original data was collected for this article.