ATF Gun Data

After reading this by Ryan at Red's Trading Post, I started poking around here to see what I could see.

Here's the ATF data on TN.

I found it interesting that 31 guns were traced from California. I thought they had laws against that kinda stuff out there....

What I really found interesting was the breakdown on page 8. Similar to what Ryan notes on his post, the numbers don't seem to make sense. Here's what I'm talking about. First here's Tennessee's four largest cities with approximate population numbers:

Memphis 670,000

Nashville 552,000

Knoxville 182,000

Chattanooga 155,000

It's safe to say Memphis and Nashville would have similar firearm recovery numbers, don't you think? Knowing Memphis like I do, I would think its' numbers would be proportionally higher than Nashville. Not even close.

Top Recovery Cities for Firearms with a Tennessee Recovery Jan 1 - Dec 31, 2006

Memphis 406

Nashville 1,354

To add to the head-scratching, here's the other two cities:

Knoxville - 401
Chattanooga - 532

What I see is Memphis, who placed first runner up in the latest Morgan Quitno Most Dangerous US Cities contest (Metro division) has the second-lowest number of guns traced back to it.

I really don't know what to make of that. Is it that Nashville is controlling crime better? It's the number 7 most dangerous city with over 500k people (Memphis is #3).

How can Memphis be only six gun traces away from the bottom?

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