10/15/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 10/15/2024 11:11
Firearm traces are designed to assist law enforcement authorities in conducting investigations by tracking the sale and possession of specific firearms. Law enforcement agencies may request firearms traces for any investigative reason, and those reasons are not necessarily reported to the federal government. Not all firearms used in crime are traced and not all firearms traced are used in crime.
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 retail 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.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) National Tracing Center (NTC) is the nation's only crime gun tracing facility. As such, the NTC provides critical information that helps domestic and international law enforcement agencies solve firearms crimes, detect firearms trafficking and identify trends with respect to intrastate, interstate and international movement of crime guns. For calendar year (CY) 2023, the NTC traced more than 630,000 firearms. During this time period, the NTC has traced firearms for the United States and 77 other countries.
Firearms tracing is the systematic tracking of the movement of a firearm from its first sale by a manufacturer or importer through the distribution chain in an attempt to identify the first retail purchaser, in order to provide investigative leads for criminal investigations.
After the firearm is recovered and the identifiers are forwarded to the NTC, ATF contacts the manufacturer or importer to ascertain the sale or transfer of the firearm. ATF will attempt to contact all ensuing federal firearms licensees (wholesale/retail) in the distribution chain until a purchaser is identified or the trace process cannot continue due to a lack of accurate or complete information on the trace request or in the federal firearms licensee's records. The success of a trace result, whether domestic or international, relies upon the accuracy of the supplied firearm identifiers. The necessary identifiers for a trace include manufacturer, importer (if applicable), model, caliber and serial number.
This report relates only to firearms recovered in the top five reporting Caribbean nations and traced by ATF. The firearm trace results are based upon the supplied firearm identifiers on the Caribbean trace requests. The Caribbean trace data in this report is organized by the calendar year in which the firearm was recovered, not the year in which the trace was initiated.
For example, if a firearm was recovered in 2023 but the trace was not initiated until 2024, the data will be organized in the year of recovery, 2023. Organization by recovery date provides valuable investigative leads as well as more specific trend data. Therefore, using this example, if a firearm for which a trace is initiated in later years is determined to have been recovered in 2023, the raw trace numbers for 2023 will increase in subsequent trace data reports. As a result, the trace numbers for each calendar year may fluctuate, necessitating changes to prior years' trace numbers in future reports. If a recovery date is not provided for a firearm, trace data for that firearm is organized by the calendar year in which the trace was entered into the Firearms Tracing System by ATF.
All of the attached trace statistics had the following selection criteria in common:
Country Name | Bahamas | Dominican Republic | Jamaica | Saint Lucia | Trinidad and Tobago | |||||
# of Traces | % of all Traces | # of Traces | % of all Traces | # of Traces | % of all Traces | # of Traces | % of all Traces | # of Traces | % of all Traces | |
Category - U.S. Sourced Firearms |
||||||||||
Manufactured in the United States | 119 | 43.9 | 82 | 48.2 | 147 | 53.3 | 15 | 34.9 | 73 | 34.3 |
Imported into the United States | 147 | 54.2 | 80 | 47.1 | 87 | 31.5 | 8 | 18.6 | 70 | 32.9 |
Subtotal | 266 | 98.2 | 162 | 95.3 | 234 | 84.8 | 23 | 53.5 | 143 | 67.1 |
Category - Undetermined Source Country for Firearms |
||||||||||
Non-U.S. Manufacturer | 3 | 1.1 | 6 | 3.5 | 42 | 15.2 | 16 | 37.2 | 34 | 16.0 |
Undetermined Country of Origin | 2 | 0.7 | 2 | 1.2 | 0 | 0.0 | 4 | 9.3 | 36 | 16.9 |
Subtotal | 5 | 1.8 | 8 | 4.7 | 42 | 15.2 | 20 | 46.5 | 70 | 32.9 |
Total |
271 | 170 | 276 | 43 | 213 |
Scroll horizontally if needed to view full table.
This chart is based upon firearms recovered in the Caribbean in a particular year and submitted to ATF for tracing. This chart relates only to firearms recovered in the top five reporting Caribbean nations recovered and traced by ATF.
Country Name | Bahamas | Dominican Republic | Jamaica | Saint Lucia | Trinidad and Tobago | |||||
# of Traces | % of U.S. Sourced Traces | # of Traces | % of U.S. Sourced Traces | # of Traces | % of U.S. Sourced Traces | # of Traces | % of U.S. Sourced Traces | # of Traces | % of U.S. Sourced Traces | |
Category - U.S. Sourced Firearms |
||||||||||
Traced to a Retail Purchaser | 239 | 89.8 | 138 | 85.2 | 135 | 57.7 | 15 | 65.2 | 73 | 51.0 |
Traced to a Foreign Country | 4 | 1.5 | 2 | 1.2 | 29 | 12.4 | 1 | 4.3 | 12 | 8.4 |
Unable to Determine a Purchaser | 23 | 8.6 | 22 | 13.6 | 70 | 29.9 | 7 | 30.4 | 58 | 40.6 |
Total |
266 | 162 | 234 | 23 | 143 |
Scroll horizontally if needed to view full table.
This chart is based upon the U.S. sourced firearms from the chart above entitled "Firearms Recovered in the Caribbean and Submitted to ATF for Tracing". The total does not include trace numbers from the category "Undetermined Source Country for Firearms".
Country Name | Bahamas | Dominican Republic | Jamaica | Saint Lucia | Trinidad and Tobago | |||||
# of Traces | % of All Traces | # of Traces | % of All Traces | # of Traces | % of All Traces | # of Traces | % of All Traces | # of Traces | % of All Traces | |
Category - Types of Firearms |
||||||||||
Pistols | 243 | 89.7 | 145 | 85.3 | 252 | 91.3 | 37 | 86.0 | 143 | 67.1 |
Revolvers | 8 | 3.0 | 9 | 5.3 | 20 | 7.2 | 0 | 0.0 | 16 | 7.5 |
Rifles | 12 | 4.4 | 7 | 4.1 | 1 | 0.4 | 5 | 11.6 | 36 | 16.9 |
Shotguns | 8 | 3.0 | 7 | 4.1 | 2 | 0.7 | 0 | 0.0 | 3 | 1.4 |
Other | 0 | 0.0 | 2 | 1.2 | 1 | 0.4 | 1 | 2.3 | 15 | 7.0 |
Total |
271 | 170 | 276 | 43 | 213 |
Scroll horizontally if needed to view full table.
This chart is based upon firearms recovered in the Caribbean in a particular year and submitted to ATF for tracing.