The Trace's Mike Spies spent the past year reporting on internal gun industry documents, the kind almost no one outside the business ever sees. In a six-part series with @rollingstone , we were able to show what the gun industry knows about the its best customers— and what it isn’t telling the public. Read The Secret Files of the Gun Industry series to see what’s inside.
In many industries, manufacturers must design and build their products to federally mandated safety standards before sending them into the marketplace. That is not the case for the gun industry. Unlike hair dryers, mattresses, and even BB guns, firearms do not need to meet minimum safety standards.
Imagine a weapon that explodes in customers’ hands or fires backward at its users.
It would violate no federal gun safety regulation. No government agency has the authority to investigate or force a recall.
Many gunmakers have faced allegations of defect-related shootings. But SIG Sauer — which makes one of America’s most popular handguns, the P320 — has been the subject of far more than others in the past decade. Since 2016, more than 150 people have alleged in lawsuits and police records that their P320s fired when they didn’t pull the trigger. (SIG has denied that the P320 is capable of firing without a trigger pull. The company has also cited accounts of unintentional discharges with other firearms as evidence that issues with the P320 are neither uncommon nor suggestive of a defect.)
The causes of handgun misfires can be notoriously difficult to isolate. But dozens of former employees who worked at SIG as far back as the 1990s told The Trace’s Champe Barton that the most likely explanation for the alleged problems associated with the P320 predates the model altogether. The former employees said that changes set in motion years ago have undermined the reliability of the brand’s products and that SIG’s CEO, Ron Cohen, has fostered a culture prioritizing production numbers above all else.
Read the investigation, published in partnership with @bloombergbusiness , at the link in our bio.
Last summer, as she geared up to vote in her first presidential election, Gen Z voter Timberlyn Mazeikis told ABC News that there was a simple reason she was casting her ballot: "Gun violence is the leading cause of death in our generation." The college senior had lived through a 2023 mass shooting at Michigan State University that left three people dead and five others injured.
A reader caught the news story and wrote to us, asking: “Is it true that gun violence is the No. 1 cause of death for Gen Z? And how many of those are suicides versus other types of gun deaths?”
Trace reporters Chip Brownlee and Jennifer Mascia dug into the data, and confirmed that’s correct. But they also had a startling finding. Gen Z — people who were born between 1997 and 2012 — appears to be the only generation to experience gun violence as the leading cause of death.
On May 14, Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger signed a ban on assault weapons and ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds. The ban — which makes it a misdemeanor to sell, purchase, import, manufacture, or transfer certain semiautomatic rifles and shotguns — takes effect July 1. Violators face up to 12 months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.
Also on May 14, Spanberger signed a ban on carrying guns at hospitals that provide mental health treatment. Spanberger had wanted to remove an exception for people who have the hospital’s written authorization to carry guns, but lawmakers declined.
Lawmakers readily agreed to other amendments proposed by the governor, including a provision that directs State Police to resume enforcing the state’s mandate that every gun buyer undergo a background check. The law, enacted in 2020, required all gun transfers — even those between friends and strangers — to go through a licensed dealer so a background check can be conducted. But the requirement had been stalled since last year when a Virginia circuit court ruled it unconstitutional. The court said the requirement disenfranchised 18-to-20-year-olds, who are barred by federal law from buying handguns through a licensed dealer. This session, Virginia lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting people under 21 from buying handguns altogether, ostensibly eliminating the court’s concern.
In all, the Virginia Legislature passed more than two dozen gun-related bills during its 2026 session. Explore the legislation at the link in our bio.
Story by Jennifer Mascia
Photo: Mike Kroff/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP
A 9-year-old boy was shot and killed in Springfield, Illinois.
Six months later, the case is still unsolved, and there’s been little public pressure for answers.
Residents say fear and mistrust of police keep people from speaking up.
Officials say a task force was created to build that trust.
Many in the community say they’ve never even heard of it.
So what happens when no one talks and no one pushes?
In 2019, Mia Tretta, a high school freshman at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California, was struck in the stomach by a round from a 45-caliber pistol that had been fired by a classmate. Two students were killed during the attack, including her best friend.
Six years later, she relived that trauma during a mass shooting at Brown University, where she attended college. As she saw details of the shooting at Brown roll in, she experienced a phenomenon she called “phantom bullet syndrome” — pain in the same place where she had been shot previously.
Tretta represents a small but growing cohort of young people who have lived through more than one shooting. She also embodies the face of a recent study that links the exposure to gun violence to chronic pain.
Researchers at Rutgers University found that both direct and indirect exposure to gun violence is linked to higher rates of chronic pain among American adults.
Daniel Semenza, the study’s lead author, told The Trace that regardless of whether someone has lost a person they knew to gun violence or they’ve been shot themselves, their mental health and physical health are inextricably linked.
“Your body, through the experience of post-traumatic stress, is going to feel as if it’s happening over and over and over again, Semenza said.”
We won a New York Press Club award! Data editor Olga Pierce’s “A Trace Analysis of 150 U.S. Cities Shows One of the Greatest Drops in Gun Violence — Ever” was recognized in the National Crime Reporting category. Read the story at the link in bio.
Brittney Ross is a mother of six. And she remains a mother of six even after losing two of her children to guns.
In 2023, her son Ah’Bralen was shot and killed in Northeast Dallas, the other side of the city from where Brittney’s family lived. During the early afternoon of January 10, 2024, while she was getting Ah’Bralen dressed for his funeral, she got a phone call from her older daughter. Brittney’s baby girl, Ah’Laynah, had been shot. She died, too.
Ah’Bralen and Ah’Laynah are not the only members of the Ross family to have been shot — they’ve been touched by gun violence again and again. Yet as Brittney mourns, she continues the hard work of keeping her family together.
Photos by @allisonvsmith
Story by Joe Sexton
New numbers show a major drop in U.S. shooting deaths to start 2026, the lowest Q1 in more than a decade. But mass shootings are up and gun violence is still happening every day.
Here’s what stands out from The Trace’s latest analysis.
After losing her husband, a Philadelphia police officer, to suicide, Regan Falk @kevinreganfamilyfoundation is fighting to change how first responder deaths are classified.
She says the trauma he experienced on the job led to his death, but neither the city nor the state classify first-responder suicides as line-of-duty deaths, so Falk's family received little support.
Now, she's pushing city leaders to pass reforms that could provide benefits and resources to surviving family members and change how these deaths are understood.
Her husband, Kevin, was 30-years-old when he died by suicide — the same week he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress.
“Kevin didn't get post-traumatic stress sitting on the couch with me and the kids," Falk said. "He got it from ailments of the job."
Philadelphia City Council is now considering whether that change should happen. Watch her story.
“The grifters at FPC are mocking school shooting survivors and using the deaths of my former classmates to line their pockets.”
David Hogg is a Parkland shooting survivor-turned-political activist. He co-founded March for Our Lives, and in recent years, he’s become a major player in Democratic politics.
He remains a target of gun rights groups.
This month, the Firearms Policy Coalition launched the “DAVID HOGG BIRTHDAY MONEYBOMB” donation drive. It used Hogg’s birthday to raise money for litigation against gun control laws. In an email, the FPC told prospective donors they could give Hogg “the middle finger” by contributing.
The FPC’s campaign comes as the National Rifle Association — once the dominant voice of the American gun lobby — is struggling to regain its influence.
After losing his son in the Sandy Hook shooting, Mark Barden (@markbardenmusic // co-founder @sandyhookpromise ) says everything changed.
The hardest part: Not having answers for his children.
The documentary “All the Empty Rooms (@alltheemptyrooms )” is now streaming on Netflix.
