The National Tracing Center is the country’s only crime gun tracing facility. Its mission is to conduct firearms tracing to provide investigative leads for federal, state, local and foreign law enforcement agencies.

The National Tracing Center has processed more than 623,000 trace requests in fiscal year 2022.

The center provides critical information to law enforcement agencies by helping domestic and international law enforcement agencies solve firearms crimes; detect firearms trafficking; and track the intrastate, interstate, and international movement of crime guns.

More than 9,300 law enforcement agencies, including agencies in 50 foreign countries, have registered for eTrace, a web-based bi-lingual firearms tracing system used to assist in the tracing of U.S.-sourced firearms.

The goal of the center is to complete “Urgent” traces in less than 24 hours. Traces classified as “Routine” are completed within seven days on average.