ATF established the Youth Crime Gun Interdiction Initiative (YCGII) in 1996 to focus special agent and inspector resources on reducing youth gun violence. To increase our effectiveness, we resolved to equip our investigators and their State and local counterparts with more facts about how violent youth obtained guns. We asked our colleagues in State and local law enforcement to help us systematically follow the gun used in crime to help identify violent criminals and their illegal suppliers by tracing all crime guns with the National Tracing Center.