U.S. Gun Production Soars 300% Since 2000; Pistols Outnumber Rifles

The United States is in the middle of a great gun-buying boom that shows no sign of letting up as the annual number of firearms manufactured has nearly tripled since 2000 and spiked sharply in the past three years, according to the first comprehensive federal tally of gun commerce in two decades, Glenn Thrush reported for the New York Times.

Photo Insert: In the US, one can buy guns over the counter like generic medicine.

The report, released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on Tuesday— three days after a mass shooting in Buffalo left 10 dead — painted a vivid statistical portrait of a nation arming itself to the teeth.

Buyers capitalized on the loosening of gun restrictions by the Supreme Court, Congress, and Republican-controlled state legislatures. The numbers released Tuesday revealed an industry on the rise, with annual domestic gun production increasing from 3.9 million in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2020.

A relatively small percentage of guns produced domestically are exported overseas, so those numbers are an accurate reflection of gun-buying habits, according to ATF officials. There are around 400 million guns in the US, according to a 2018 survey conducted by the nonpartisan Small Arms Survey, which monitors gun ownership.

The data documented a drastic shift in consumer demand among gun owners that have had profound commercial, cultural and political implications: Starting in 2009, Glock-type semiautomatic handguns, purchased for personal protection, began to outsell rifles, which have been typically used in hunting.

Embedded in the 306-page document was another statistic that law enforcement officials find especially troubling. The police recovered 19,344 privately manufactured firearms, untraceable homemade weapons known as “ghost guns,” in 2021, a 10-fold increase since 2016.

Law enforcement officials say that has contributed to the surge in killings, especially in California, where ghost guns make up as many as half of weapons recovered at crime scenes.

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