Machine gun conversion devices traced by ATF, 2019-2023

The number of machine gun conversion devices recovered at crime scenes by law enforcement and subsequently traced by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has increased dramatically — rising more than 784% from 658 in 2019 to 5,816 in 2023.

Between 2019 and 2023, machine gun conversion devices accounted for nearly 13% — 11,088 out of 88,425 — of all privately made firearms recovered and traced.

This data includes both U.S. states and territories. The ATF began identifying machine gun conversion devices as traceable firearms in 2022 and retroactively reviewed trace data back to 2019. State-level data for some of the years is unavailable because the ATF has not yet released those numbers.
Chart: Amanda Hernández/StatelineSource: U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and ExplosivesGet the dataEmbed Created with Datawrapper