On Thursday February 23rd, Steven Dettelbach, ATF Director, was special guest speaker during an Ohio Moms Demand Action meeting to review the state of gun laws in Ohio.  He discussed a report recently released by ATF: "National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment: Crime Guns Volume 2," which lists detailed statistics on gun trafficking by state.

This report is the first released report of its kind in the past 20 years.  During his presentation, he discussed “time to crime” as a metric reported by each state.  This metric measures the length of time between the date of a firearm’s purchase to the date of its recovery by law enforcement as a gun used in a crime. 

In 2021, there were 2,270 guns recovered from crimes in Ohio with a time to crime less than 3 months (source: ATF.gov). Time to crime is a leading indicator of illegal activity in Ohio. 

Additional metrics Dettelbach highlighted from the report were the number of stolen guns and the need to secure them safely.

 He also highlighted the staggering increase in machine gun conversion devices.  These devices can be made with a 3D printer and are illegal in the US.  The use of these devices has increased 570% from 2017 to 2021.