ATF officials break down Arizona’s role in gun trafficking
ATF data shows in 2023, 5,780 guns used in crimes out of state were sourced in Arizona.
PHOENIX — Guns used in two recent school shootings have been traced back to Arizona.
Officials say the gun used by a 17-year-old student who opened fire at his high school in Nashville was originally purchased in Arizona. Officials did not release many details but said the pistol was purchased by an individual in Arizona in 2022 and it was never reported stolen.
The firearm used by a gunman at a small school in Northern California in December was also purchased in Arizona. The 56-year-old gunman shot and nearly killed two elementary school students. Officials say the shooter was a prohibited possessor who bought the firearm from another prohibited possessor at a motel in Chandler.
That man, Jesse Kitigawa, was arrested for possessing a weapon as a prohibited possessor.
“It doesn’t just stop with the crime and the individual that committed the crime. How did they get that firearm in the first place? You want to see how that that firearm traveled from the legal sale into that that criminal element,” said Brendan Iber, the Special Agent in Charge of the Phoenix Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Iber said the ATF uses a program called eTrace to figure out where guns used in crimes came from. He said there is no national registry of firearms in the United States.
“It brings us back to the manufacturer. We have to reach out to the manufacturer, find out who the distributor was, from there down to the Federal Firearms Licensee, the gun store,” Iber said. “Reach out to them and then they will be able to tell us, based off the federal forms that you fill out when you purchase a firearm, who the first known legal purchaser of that firearm was.”
Iber said law enforcement officials will then work to interview the original purchaser of the firearm and continue to follow the distribution chain, leading up to the crime they are investigating. Nationally, the average time from when a firearm is purchased legally to when it is used in a crime is about seven years.
Iber said in 2024, there were around 19,000 traces of crime guns initiated in Arizona. He said most of those guns were also sourced in Arizona.
ATF data from 2023 shows at least 5,780 guns used in crimes out of state were also sourced from Arizona.
“We have quite a few cases where firearms are being purchased in Arizona via straw purchase or some other means,” Iber said.
Iber said it’s also not uncommon for guns used by cartels in Mexico to have been sourced in Arizona.
“We have two dedicated groups in the Phoenix Field Division in Arizona that are Operation Southbound, only looking for those firearms that are being trafficked into Mexico,” Iber explained.
Iber said tracing is critical because it often uncovers trafficking networks and additional crimes that may have been committed.
“You save so many lives if you can cut that pipeline off before they ever get into the hands of those individuals. And you can’t put a number on how many lives you save when you do that,” Iber said.