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Outlet profile

The Trace

U.S. center-left (gun-violence-focused nonprofit newsroom)

Owned byIndependent 501(c)(3) nonprofit, The Trace Inc. It has no parent company or individual owner. It was started in 2015 with seed money from Everytown for Gun Safety's support fund and the Joyce Foundation.
FundingPhilanthropy: foundation grants, individual donors and other organizations. Named funders include Arnold Ventures, the Kendeda Fund, the MacArthur Foundation, the Joyce Foundation and the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. The outlet publishes a donor and financial transparency page. It does not rely on advertising or a paywall.
On the administrationbroadly critical

Background

The Trace launched in 2015 as a nonprofit outlet devoted to gun-related news. It was started with seed money from the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund and the Joyce Foundation. It says it is editorially independent of its funders. Since then it has added funders such as Arnold Ventures, Kendeda and MacArthur. In 2024 it launched a Gun Violence Data Hub, funded in part by Arnold Ventures, Kendeda and MacArthur. Its reporting focuses on firearm policy, the gun industry, ATF enforcement, shootings, and data analysis. Gun-rights groups, including the Second Amendment Foundation, and outlets such as Guns America have criticized it. They call it a gun-control-aligned outlet because of Everytown's role as a founder and continuing funder. Other newsrooms have partnered with it or republished its work. In 2026 it covered the Trump administration's ATF deregulation push, including a roughly 34-proposal rule rollback and an NFA enforcement change. One piece analyzed 38,000 public comments on the proposed rules, using an AI model. Other pieces found that a repealed Biden-era rule had little practical effect and that the ATF is strained by staffing and budget limits. Its coverage is fact-based and data-heavy, but the topic selection and framing generally align with a gun-safety perspective.

Sources

  1. Donor and Financial Transparency – The Trace
  2. The Trace (website) – Wikipedia
  3. The Trace – InfluenceWatch
  4. The Trace Launches the Gun Violence Data Hub
  5. The Trump Administration's Campaign to Loosen Gun Regulations Is Getting Pushback From an Unlikely Source – The Trace
  6. We Analyzed 38,000 Public Comments on the Trump Administration's Proposed Gun Rules – The Trace
  7. Exclusive: The 'Independent' News Outlet Secretly Funded by Everytown for Gun Safety – Guns America

Profile compiled 2026-10-16; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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