Since 1992, more than 2,500 guns recovered by police and tied to crimes in the Washington D.C. area have been traced back to their original sale at Realco Guns in Forestville, Md. The total is four times that of the dealer with the next highest number of gun traces.

A Washington Post investigation found that a small percentage of gun stores sell most of the weapons recovered by police in crimes. This reinforces a major finding in studies that came out before federal gun-tracing data were removed from public view by an act of Congress in 2003. Read the full story.