GIFFORDS thanks ATF Director Steve Dettelbach for his leadership

WASHINGTON — Today, GIFFORDS, the national gun violence prevention organization founded by former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, released the following statement thanking the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Steve Dettelbach for his service and his commitment to stopping gun violence. 

“GIFFORDS is incredibly grateful for ATF Director Steve Dettelbach’s work with the agency and thanks him for his courageous leadership. For the first time in years we had an ATF director who focused on what ATF is meant to do: keeping the public safe by enforcing life-saving federal gun laws. Under his leadership we made notable progress by expanding background checks, banning ghost guns, taking action on pistol braces, and releasing vital gun trafficking data for the first time in 20 years,” said GIFFORDS Executive Director Emma Brown. 

“As he recently stated in the final trafficking report, ‘ATF is the only federal law enforcement agency whose sole focus is to protect the public from violent crime.’ Yet extremist Congressional Republicans are pushing to abolish this vital agency that is working day in and day out to keep the public safe. If they care about reducing crime and protecting public safety, as they claim, they need to heed his recommendations and fully fund the agency,” Brown continued. 

Director Dettelbach was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2022, becoming the first Senate-confirmed ATF director in nearly a decade. 

Earlier this month ATF released the fourth volume of its gun trafficking report, the National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment. The report found that:

• Between 2019 and 2023, there were 25,414 crime guns recovered and traced that had previously been in the possession of law enforcement.

• Between 2011 and 2023, the number of active federal firearm manufacturer licenses increased 269%.
• Between 2017 and 2023, there was a 100% increase in the number of incidents involving theft from licensed firearm manufacturers and a 94% increase in the share of guns sold by these manufacturers that were then used in crimes. 
• In cases that were identified as using an interstate trafficking pipeline (i.e., when individuals buy guns in a state with weaker gun laws before trafficking them into states with stronger gun laws), more than half (54%) involved one of three major pipelines: the East Coast I-95 Pipeline, the Mississippi River Pipeline, or the Southwest Pipeline.
• The number of ghost guns recovered in crimes increased almost 1,600% between 2017 and 2023. The number of suspected machine gun conversion devices recovered in crimes increased 784% between 2019 and 2023.
• While Mexico crime guns increasingly originate from all states, from 2022 to 2023, federal firearm licensees in three states—Texas, Arizona, and California—accounted for 73% of all Mexico crime guns that could be traced to a purchaser. Those in Texas accounted for more than half.

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