Georgia gun stores supplied more guns that were later recovered at crimes in other places than any other state in the nation, according to a Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence review of 2007 federal data.

As a source for guns, Georgia outranked much more populous states such as Florida, which was second, and Texas, which was third. According to the Brady Center, federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives data showed 2,631 crime guns recovered in other states were traced to Georgia stores.

Georgia, as in virtually every other state, is its own biggest provider of guns recovered at crime scenes here, 5,008, according to ATF data. The Brady Center said that number represented 75.8 percent of all guns recovered at Georgia crime scenes.

Last year, there were 11.7 gun deaths for every 100,000 people in Georgia compared with a national rate of 10.35 per 100,000, the center said.

"We hope these numbers will send a message to the [Georgia] Legislature that it's time to stop pandering to the gun lobby and do what's necessary to protect communities and families around the state and the country," said Daniel Vice, senior attorney at the Brady Center in Washington.

But ATF and gun proponents found flaws in the Brady Center's calculations.

ATF supervisor Todd Reichert in Washington noted that the agency's data included some gun sales that were originally made as much as 10 years ago, which is much longer than the two-year "time to crime" ATF considers an indicator of a possible illegal gun sale.

Reichert also said not all law enforcement agencies report recovered crime guns for tracing. And, he said, spikes in the numbers come after ATF helps police agencies clear backlogs as those departments begin reporting recovered crime guns to the federal agency.

Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, trade association for the firearms industry, accused the Brady Center of pandering to gun-control advocates and mischaracterizing the ATF gun tracing data, which the law limits.

"You cannot draw any statistical information from trace data. It's not particularly meaningful information," Keane said. "It is propaganda by the Brady Center to advance their anti-gun legislation to restrict the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans. They apparently have no respect for the Georgia Legislature, and they have no respect for state sovereignty."

Georgia has long had the overall reputation as a gun-friendly state. Its firearms law is the minimum required by federal statute; sales are allowed only to adults who have no criminal records and have not been involuntarily committed to a hospital for mental illness. And on July 1, a new state law will let permitted gun owners carry weapons on mass transit and into restaurants if the gun owners are not drinking alcohol.

"Our laws are, if anything, too restrictive," said Bob Thornton, who is on the executive committee for the Georgia Sport Shooting Association. "The laws in place are certainly not lax, as the Brady organization would imply."

But the Brady Center consistently has given Georgia a failing grade on its state-by-state scorecard. "It's unfortunate that this is a distinction Georgia has had two years in a row," Vice said.

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GUNS AND CRIME

1: Rank of Georgia in number of crime guns traced to in-state gun dealers and recovered in other states

2,631: Number of crime guns traced to Georgia

11.7: Number of gun deaths per 100,000 people in Georgia in 2007