Despite this well-known admonition from the Congressional Research Service, the media made much hay out of two reports released this week by BATF on trace data. One was BATF's second report in a series based on data from cities that have agreed to ask the agency to trace every gun apprehended during a crime. But, as is often the case, BATF's conclusions raise more questions than they answer.

      In the large majority of "crime gun" traces, the crime was illegal possession -- most guns used to commit violent crimes are not recovered by the police, and thus never traced. Reinforcing the actual conclusions that can be drawn from trace data, this week's report indicates it was not designed to produce stable statistical results that can be used to provide a national picture of guns used in crimes, or even data good enough to compare one of the 27 cities included in the report to the others.

      Further, many reports analyzing the BATF's conclusions noted a large percentage of guns traced to crimes were purchased legally, but then sold to a "straw purchaser." The practice of a "lawful" firearm purchaser transferring a firearm to a prohibited person is already against the law, yet the media chose to focus more heavily on the original "legal" purchase, and not stress the violation of federal law as it pertains to the subsequent transfer to a prohibited person.

      Additionally, the only guns traced for this report were those BATF considered new enough to be traceable. If a gun was made before 1990, a trace generally wasn't attempted. Thus, BATF turned down about 1/4 or 1/3 of all trace requests, and the traces that were conducted were successful in only about half of instances.

      The report also suffers from extensive missing data -- cases where BATF could not complete the trace. Therefore, a higher number of guns than what BATF reported probably came from the black market or had been stolen. Similarly, surveys of criminals indicate a higher percentage of their guns having been stolen than did the report. The second report underestimates stolen guns because BATF is not likely to trace stolen guns. Why? Even though BATF notes that "firearms trafficked to juveniles and adult criminals are likely to be older firearms" and that "stolen firearms, especially those stolen from individuals and residences, tend to be older," it doesn't trace older guns.

      These latest reports present only very limited national results, because the 27 participating cities are not a representative sample of the nation. Aggregating results to get a national picture, as was done in the Feb. 22, 1999, New York Times report by Fox Butterfield, is described by BATF as misleading, and should not be misused to support policy arguments.

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