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| Formation | 19 June 2015 (2015-06-19) |
|---|---|
| 47-4175513 | |
| Location |
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| Owner | Trace Media Inc. |
Managing director | James Burnett[1] |
Editor in chief | Tali Woodward[1] |
Executive editor | Craig Hunter[1] |
President | John Feinblatt[2] |
| Staff | 26[1] (2023) |
| Website | www |
The Trace is an Americannon-profit journalism outlet devoted togun-related news in the United States. It was established in 2015 with seed money from the largestgun control advocacy groupEverytown for Gun Safety, which was founded by formerNew York City mayorMichael Bloomberg, and went live on 19 June of that year. The site's editor in chief is Tali Woodward, and it shares its president,John Feinblatt,[2] withEverytown for Gun Safety.
John Feinblatt said the idea forThe Trace stemmed from the difficulties faced byEverytown for Gun Safety, where he serves as President, to obtain "information about gun violence," even though the phrase "gun violence" is a misnomer, as violent acts committed with a knife aren't called "knife violence," nor are drunk driving accidents referred to as "car violence." He used the example of theTiahrt Amendment (named after its author U.S. RepresentativeTodd Tiahrt (R-KS)), a provision of the 2003DOJappropriations bill that prohibited theATF'sNational Tracing Center from sharing its firearms trace database with anyone besides law enforcement agencies or prosecutors in a criminal investigation.[3][4] The Amendment also "blocks any data legally released from being admissible in civil lawsuits against gun sellers or manufacturers," and was supported by theNational Rifle Association of America (NRA).[5]Everytown for Gun Safety, and other organizations say that gun trace data is "important information needed for solving crimes such as "tracing guns from the point of sale to their use in violent crimes".[6]
FormerNew York City mayorMichael Bloomberg had foundedEverytown for Gun Safety "which was created after theSandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 where more than 20 people died, most of them young children.[7] The editorial news director at the time, James Burnett said, "We do bring a point of view to the issue of gun violence: We believe there is too much of it. But our focus is on a related problem: the shortage of information on the subject at large."[7]
The Trace partners with other national and local media organizations, includingThe Atlantic,[8]Slate,[9]Lenny[10]The Daily News,[11]Vice,[12]The Guardian,[13]Tampa Bay Times,[14]Newsweek,[15]The Huffington Post,[16]TIME[17]Fusion,[18]The Undefeated,[19]Politico Magazine,[20]Essence,[21]The Chicago Sun-Times,[22] andThe New Yorker.[23]
In a partnership withThe Atlantic,The Trace investigated the reasons theCenters for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which has an annual budget of over $11 billion, stopped doing research on gun violence. In aTrace interview,Mark L. Rosenberg, a founder of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, the division of the agency responsible for doing gun violence research, Rosenberg said that it was "the leadership of the CDC who stopped the agency from doing gun violence research. The Injury Center, established by Rosenberg and five colleagues in 1992, had an annual budget of c. $260,000 focused on "identifying the root causes of firearm deaths and the best methods to prevent them".[8] Rosenberg toldThe Trace in 2016, "Right now, there is nothing stopping them from addressing this life-and-death national problem."[8] It was previously assumed that the research was not being done because of a sentence in the 1996Dickey Amendment, which was supported by the NRA, and inserted into the 1996appropriations bill which stated "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control".[24] In 1997, "Congress redirected all of the money previously earmarked for gun violence research to the study of traumatic brain injury."[8]David Satcher, who was the CDC head from 1993 to 1998,[25] advocated for gun violence research until he left in 1998. In 1999 Rosenberg was fired.[8] Over a dozen "public health insiders, including current and former CDC senior leaders" toldTrace interviewers that CDC senior leaders took an overly cautious stance in their interpretation of the Dickey amendment. They could have done much more.[8]
The Trace keeps track of NRA spending on elections. The NRA broke its own record of $31.7 million in 2014 with $36.3 million in 2016 in support ofDonald Trump's candidacy for president.[26]
An investigation by Adam Weinstein, published inThe Trace in 2015, describedStudents for Concealed Carry (SCC), an organization that supportscampus carry, as being backed and influenced by theLeadership Institute (LI), an organization sponsoring conservative student activism, andGun Owners of America, a gun-rights lobbying organization.[27][28][29] SCC, in turn, denied being founded by or receiving regular funding from outside groups, claiming that the organization is student-run while also acknowledging ties to other gun-rights organizations and saying that some campus chapters received grants from the Leadership Institute.[28][29][30]
NPR describedThe Trace as an independent journalism organization "dedicated to covering America's gun violence crisis."[31]
Mike Spies, who has been reporting on the gun lobby since 2015, wrote a series called "The Gunfighters", which investigated the influence of theNational Rifle Association of America (NRA) on state gun policy and politics,[31] including the NRA's promotion of a grading system for lawmakers from A+ to F (published in an article with the New YorkDaily News),[32] and the role of the NRA and NRA lobbyists such asMarion Hammer in opposingproposed legislation requiring the safe storage of weapons and in promoting "stand-your-ground" legislation.[33][34]
In articles in 2016, Spies described how the NRA began to use their scoring system to influence judicial nominations. The first attempt was during theconfirmation proceedings of Supreme Court justiceSonia Sotomayor in 2009 at the request ofMitch McConnell and again in 2010 withElena Kagan. In 2011, the NRA opposedCaitlin Halligan's nomination to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and as a result, Senate Republicans blocked her confirmation. In 2016, the NRA opposed thenomination ofMerrick Garland to the Supreme Court because he did not "respect the individual right to bear arms" - in 2007, Garland had "cast a vote in favor of allowing his court to review a crucial opinion by a three-judge panel that had found D.C.'s handgun ban unconstitutional."[35] This article was cited inThe Second Amendment and Gun Control: Freedom, Fear, and the American Constitution which presented both sides of the debate between those who "favour more gun controls and those who would prefer fewer of them."[36]
The agency's former leaders say it could do more to explore the subject, but its officials fear political—and personal—retribution.
... none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.
The gun group's 2016 outlay in support of Republican candidates has already surpassed what it spent two years ago.
The gun-rights group mines the histories of the president's judicial nominees for anything that resembles a stance on firearms, and finds a way to use it against them.