Lately, I’ve seen gun people controllers repeating a factoid about crime guns, traces, and the need to crack down on evil licensed dealers: 1% of dealers are responsible for 57% of all crime guns.

As best I can tell, that’s making the rounds because Elizabeth “1/1024th Central American Cherokee” Warren included it in her plan to fight “gun” violence, “Protecting Our Communities from Gun Violence.”

Revoking licenses for gun dealers who break the rules. Only 1% of gun dealers are responsible for 57% of guns used in crimes. My Administration will direct the ATF to prioritize oversight of dealers with serial compliance violations — and then use its authority to revoke the license of dealers who repeatedly violate the rules.

And that’s a real statistic, straight from the ATF.

Nineteen years ago. In the “Commerce in Firearms in the United States 2000” report.

Just 1.2 percent of dealers — 1,020 of the approximately 83,200 licensed retail dealers and pawnbrokers — accounted for over 57 percent of the crime guns traced to current dealers in 1998. And just over 450 licensed dealers in 1998 had 10 or more crime guns with a time-to-crime of three years or less traced to them. ATF is now targeting enforcement and inspection resources at these dealers, as well as making crime gun trace analysis available to criminal investigators.

Using data from 21 years ago. And do note the bold-face portion, where they explained –19 years ago — that they were already going after those dealers, and expanded their process to make it easier for investigators to catch new potential troublemakers.

Problem solved. Warren is — as happens so often with these victim disarmers — behind the times, demanding what already is.

I did wonder if there’s an updated version of that statistic. Since the ATF is addressing the issue, it seemed like they might mention the percentage of “bad” dealers occasionally. Sadly, that statistic is not mentioned in the ATF’s annual “Firearms Trace Data” report

The 2000 report is the last time I can see that the ATF published the statistic. Since they working on the problem, I suspect any real rogue FFLs were shut down, and there simply aren’t scary enough numbers for further demonization. Hence, Warren using 21 year old data.

So the next time you see that just tell the person:

“I beg your pardon, but that stat is from a nineteen year-old report, using data from 1998. The ATF began taking action against those dealers back then. It hardly seems likely they’re still at it. Try to keep up.”

[Permission to republish this article is granted so long as it is not edited, and the author and The Zelman Partisans are credited.]