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Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed joined 11 other mayors across the country in contributing data on the manufacturers of guns used in crimes for a report released Wednesday.
The top manufacturer of recovered crime guns was a Glock in 9 of the 12 reporting cities. On average, over 1.5 times more Glocks were recovered than the second leading manufacturer in each of those nine cities. Five gun manufacturers accounted for over half of the recovered crime guns: Glock (16.6 percent), Taurus (12.4 percent), Smith & Wesson (11.8 percent), Ruger (6.5 percent), and Polymer80 (3.8 percent). Collectively across this sample of 12 cities, these five manufacturers accounted for nearly 10,000 recovered crime guns in 2021.
“As state legislatures continue to pass permitless carry bills that will make gun violence worse, local leaders are committed to continue exploring every possible avenue to keep our communities safe,” Reed said. “This public health crisis is worsened by members of the gun industry who operate in the shadows and we’re gathering at this summit to share strategies on how to take the fight to those gun manufacturers and dealers.”
Reed is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which hosted a summit Wednesday that called on ATF to take key steps towards “fulfilling its vitally important oversight role.” Those measures include:
- Giving cities the data and analysis needed to fully understand the flow of illegal guns and develop targeted interventions, and clarifying that the Tiahrt Amendment does not prevent cities from publicly releasing analysis of this important data;
- Strongly implementing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) and aggressively enforcing the new ghost gun rule;
- Cracking down on rogue gun dealers by requiring high-risk dealers to implement anti-trafficking standards; issuing a new Demand Letter to those high-risk dealers requiring them to share more information with ATF, and dramatically increasing gun dealer inspections to shut down the gun dealers who are violating the law;
- Investigating the secondary commercial marketplaces that are the source of guns for gun traffickers, including online marketplaces and gun shows, and implementing a new regulation defining who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms (a provision in BSCA) to clearly define the unlicensed sellers who are unlawfully selling firearms without a background check.
“I thank Mayor Reed for prioritizing gun violence prevention and addressing the critical need for firearm industry accountability,” said Judith Rogers, a volunteer with the Alabama Chapter of Moms Demand Action. “Alabama has the second highest rate of gun violence in this country, and has some of the weakest gun safety laws. In order to make our cities safer, we must shine a light on the gun industry, which for too long has operated away from public scrutiny.”
