Second Amendment Foundation Blasts ProPublica Over 30% ATF Data, Citing Bloomberg-Linked Sources
Updated
Updated · The Truth About Guns · Jun 4
Second Amendment Foundation Blasts ProPublica Over 30% ATF Data, Citing Bloomberg-Linked Sources
2 articles · Updated · The Truth About Guns · Jun 4
Summary
SAF attacked ProPublica’s June 1 investigation on Trump’s rollback of ATF gun-trafficking enforcement, arguing the report leaned on advocacy-linked sources without clearly conveying their ties.
Marianna Mitchem — a 21-year ATF veteran central to the story — now works for Everytown, while ProPublica also cited The Trace, which shares leadership and funding links with the Bloomberg-backed gun-control group.
The critique says those overlaps blur ProPublica’s own ethics standard of independent judgment, even though the underlying figures it highlighted — including a 30% drop in trafficking referrals and a 69% fall in dealer-license revocations — appear accurate.
That leaves the dispute centered less on whether ATF enforcement changed than on whether ProPublica gave readers enough transparency about how Bloomberg-linked advocacy networks shaped the sourcing and framing.