“Every law enforcement agency should be tracing all the guns they recover,” said Thomas Ahern, a former senior special agent for ATF who now works as a spokesman for Chicago Police Department.Ĭhicago police trace every crime gun they recover, Ahern said. “Every law enforcement agency should be tracing all the guns they recover.” It’s hard for law enforcement to tell if a gun dealer is actually selling a high number of crime guns, or if that dealer’s guns are simple ending up with police departments that are tracing more comprehensively. What’s more, experts say if gun tracing is uneven, it skews the good data that law enforcement gets. By investigating the original sales, they were able to arrest a straw purchaser. And collectively, trace reports can help police identify trafficking patterns, and what kind of laws might keep firearms out of criminals’ hands.įor example, Chicago police traced four different crime guns they recovered this summer back to the same Idaho pawn shop. It can help police investigate holes in the system, for instance the one that allowed Shannon to get a gun he ended up using to kill someone. A trace report can help police solve a specific crime, like when one shows a murder suspect buying a firearm just days before a homicide. When a gun is traced, the ATF uses basic information from the recovered weapon, like its serial number and manufacturer, to track down when it was first sold by a licensed dealer, and to whom. “It’s fundamental to the investigative process.” “How do we prevent crimes if we don’t know how they happen?” said Jim Bueermann, the president of the Police Foundation, a nonprofit police research and training organization, when presented with our findings. A survey of police departments across the country revealed that while some trace every gun, plenty trace only erratically - or not at all. South Carolina police are not alone in their spotty tracing habits. Instead, we found that in 21 of the cases, there was no evidence the police had requested a trace. At first, our goal was to learn how they had obtained their guns. All the killers had prior domestic violence charges.
Starting with a database developed by The Post and Courier of Charleston, The Trace investigated 35 homicides in South Carolina from 2005 to the present. It’s a key way to solve gun crimes, investigate trafficking, and learn what the ATF’s gun-store inspectors and police could do to keep guns out of criminals’ hands.īut even though traces cost police departments nothing and the request form takes less than five minutes to fill out, a Trace investigation showed that many agencies in South Carolina are not initiating traces, or are pursuing them only occasionally. Policing experts and federal officials agree that law enforcement officers should trace every single crime gun that they recover. Gun tracing, said Captain Robert Burnish, is “a tool we use on a case-by-case basis.” There was an easy way for police to find out where the gun originated - filling out a simple online form called a trace request provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.īut the case file on Shannon doesn’t include any evidence of a trace.Īsked about it, the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said they’re not sure why. He claimed that he’d been “messing” with the gun in the bathroom as his girlfriend, Beverly Thomas, cleaned the shower when it suddenly went off. He knew he shouldn’t have it, he said, but he held onto it for protection. When police arrived, Shannon, then 29, told them he’d found the Smith & Wesson revolver a couple of weeks earlier in the woods behind his Rembert, S.C., home. Federal law barred him from possessing a firearm. He had pleaded guilty to a slew of crimes over the years, including criminal domestic violence, burglary, and aggravated assault. The night before Valentine’s Day 2010, South Carolina resident Derrick Shannon called 911 to say he’d accidentally shot his girlfriend in the head.
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