Washington ( CNN ) -- Thousands of firearms have gone missing from manufacturers ' inventories since 2009 `` without a record of being legally sold , '' according to a report released Thursday by a gun control advocacy group . The report by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence put the number of missing weapons at 16,485 . `` It is shocking that gun makers are so oblivious to public safety that they lose track of thousands of guns every year , '' Henigan , acting president of the Brady Center , said in a statement . `` Given the lethality of its product , the gun industry has a special duty to act responsibly . Instead , it has a scandalous record of carelessness . '' The Brady Center report suggests that some guns may never have had serial numbers stamped into them , making them virtually impossible to trace . The group says that the missing guns are often used by criminals precisely because they are so hard to trace . The report does not mention which manufacturers are reported to having missing firearms . The Brady Center says the data was collected from a Bureau of Alcohol , Tobacco , Firearms and Explosives report that was presented to the gun industry last month . But the report also states that ATF conducts their compliance examinations at only about 20 % of gun dealers and manufacturers each year , and says as a result , `` The 16,485 'missing ' guns are likely a vast undercount of the total number of guns that disappeared from gun manufacturers in the last two and a half years . '' Andrew Molchan , Publisher of American Firearms Industry Magazine , slammed the report in a statement to CNN . `` The Brady spin and implication that some manufacturers , whose names are not mentioned so we ca n't check the charges , are knowingly selling guns before they are logged into the manufacturer 's records is absolutely ridiculous , '' Molchan said . According to ATF statistics , more than 5 million firearms were made in the United States in 2008 by about 4,487 manufacturers . The federal law enforcement agency is in charge of inspecting companies that make and sell firearms to make sure they are in compliance with federal laws . The ATF says about 600 agents did more than 10,000 inspections last year , but the Brady Center says the agency is n't able to do enough because it lacks manpower and money . The ATF said it had not read the report and would not comment . The Brady Center is an advocacy group for tightened gun laws and was named after Jim Brady , President Ronald Reagan 's press secretary , who was shot in the head in the attempted assassination of Reagan in 1981 .
The Center slams gun owners ' ` ` scandalous acts of carelessness '' Report ##ing some of the missing guns may not have serial numbers . An industry advocate calls the report 's implications ` ` absolutely ridiculous ''