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A majority of Rochester’s recovered crime guns come from outside New York, though the number of recovered guns from within the state is rising, according to a new gun trace data report from the firearm advocacy group Brady.
“I find it troubling that some of our own neighbors and business owners from the suburbs of Rochester are supplying a significant number of illegal guns that end up in our city and used in a crime,” Mayor Malik Evans said at a press conference announcing the report.
The Gun Trace Data Report investigated nearly 2,000 crime guns recovered by the Rochester Police Department from 2022 through September 2025 and traced them to their initial source: gun dealers or ghost guns. The report follows up on Brady’s initial work with the city of Rochester in 2023.
New findings are consistent with the findings of the initial 2023 report:
■ Most crime guns recovered in Rochester were first sold by dealers located outside the state.
■ About a third of Rochester’s recovered crime guns were first sold less than three years prior to their recovery.
■ A small subset of dealers sourced the majority of recovered crime guns. Many of these dealers are located in Monroe County
The Rochester Police Department recovered 2,411 crime guns and successfully traced 1,947 of those guns to dealers; a majority (66%) were initially located out of state. A significant number of traced guns were also sold by dealers who are no longer in business. This is an increase from the initial 2023 report where 57% of all recovered guns were from out of state.
Gun traces themselves are trending upward. According to data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, there were 435 total traces in 2014. Based on the newest Brady report, a decade later, there were 688.
According to the report, there remains a significant number of local dealers still in business, sourcing crime guns that move from the sales counter to the street in less than three years, a key indicator of trafficking.
“I would also point out that the city of Rochester does not have any places that sell guns,” said Evans. “I don’t think we have any gun dealers within Rochester.”
Over the past three and a half years, the share of crime guns that could be traced to New York dealers has risen from one in five to one in three (23% to 33%). Dealers in Georgia, Ohio, and Florida were the source of one-quarter of the guns recovered and traced in Rochester since 2022.
Of the 1,150 dealers connected to traces from 2022-2025, 202 dealers (17%) sold half of the 1,947 guns with successful traces. The top 34 dealers (3%) sold 529 crime guns, or 35% of the traces.
Ghost guns–unserialized guns that are assembled from separately purchased components–have grown more varied as legal measures have not fully slowed advances in development technology and manufacturers of gun kits continue to grow.
The full report cannot legally be released under federal law, Evans noted.
“This legislation, as you know, was pushed by the gun lobby and severely limited our ability to share what should be public information,” he said.
Looking ahead, Evans said there is interest in strengthening enforcement against local gun sellers. This was previously mentioned in 2023 as difficult to accomplish due to overlapping and complex legal jurisdictions.
“These gun dealers need to understand that their responsibility to their community does not end when they complete a sale or a gun leaves their store,” Evans said.
Narm Nathan is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and a member of the Oasis Project’s inaugural cohort. Jacob Schermerhorn is a Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
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