WASHINGTON – The United States is in the midst of a major boom in arms purchases that shows no signs of weakening, as the annual number of firearms produced has nearly tripled since 2000 and risen sharply over the past three years, according to the first comprehensive federal arms trade number in two decades.
A report released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Tuesday – three days after the massacre in Buffalo, left 10 dead – paints a vivid statistical portrait of a nation arming itself to the teeth. Buyers have benefited from the easing of gun restrictions by the Supreme Court, Congress and Republican-controlled state legislatures.
The data documents a drastic change in consumer demand among gun owners, which has profound commercial, cultural and political implications: Since 2009, Glock semi-automatic pistols purchased for personal protection have begun to surpass sales of rifles commonly used in hunting. .
The 306-page document included other statistics that law enforcement officials find particularly worrying. Police found 19,344 privately produced firearms, untraceable homemade weapons known as “ghost weapons” in 2021, a tenfold increase since 2016. Law enforcement officials say this has contributed to an increase in homicides. related to weapons, especially in California, where ghost weapons make up half of the weapons found at the crime scene.
Figures released on Tuesday reveal the rise of the industry, with annual local arms production rising from 3.9 million in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2020. A relatively small percentage of arms produced domestically are exported so these numbers are an accurate reflection of the weapons. shopping habits, according to ATF officials.
There are currently about 400 million weapons in the United States, according to a 2018 study by the non-partisan Small Arms Survey, which tracks gun ownership.
Statistics collected by the ATF research department from industry, academia and government experts offered some big surprises. Many of the broader outlines and conclusions have been widely known through other sources or anecdotally for months, even years.
Nevertheless, the publication of the report represents a significant victory for proponents of arms control.
As Democrats have failed in their broader program to curb easy access to firearms, especially semi-automatic rifles, they have been able to gradually pull back the blackout information curtain that obscures arms trade data since the George W. Bush administration.
A year ago, President Biden ordered the ATF, a small agency tasked with enforcing national weapons laws and regulations, to collect and analyze 20 years of weapons data after a series of mass shootings in the country.
In the introduction to the report, Gary M. Restaino, interim director of the bureau, wrote that the purpose of the data release was “to prevent the diversion of these firearms from the legal to the illegal market.”
During a White House summit on violence reduction on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco stressed a similar point, saying: “We can only deal with the current increase in violence if we have the best information available. and we use the most effective tools and research to fuel our efforts. “
Her remarks came the same day Mr Biden traveled to Buffalo to visit the site of Saturday’s racially motivated shooting.
Before boarding Air Force One, Mr Biden told reporters he would redouble his efforts to “persuade Congress” to take action on gun control, but acknowledged it would be difficult without a major change in mood. of legislators.
The report, although eagerly awaited, is considered less consistent than the forthcoming analysis of weapons used to commit crimes – which will use law enforcement, academic and public health sources – to offer an equally comprehensive picture of trafficking patterns.
“It’s important to know the scope and size of the overall market, and the trade report sheds light on that,” said Nick Suplina, senior vice president of Everytown Arms Security, an arms control group founded by the former mayor of New York. Michael R. Bloomberg.
“But the next logical step is to get the data on the extracted weapons for crimes, to return this information to the public sphere, so that we can understand how these weapons are moving from legal production to illegal use,” added Mr. Suplina.
This report is expected to highlight the role of illegal straw buyers, legitimate buyers who sell weapons to people who are prohibited from buying guns, and perhaps identify federally licensed dealers who are responsible for selling the largest number of weapons. used later in crimes.
Some of this information has already become public.
This month, the Brady Arms Control Group released a study of firearms tracking data in Pennsylvania, which found that six small retailers in southern and northeastern Philadelphia sold more than 11,000 weapons, which were later recovered in criminal investigations or confiscated by owners who have received them illegally since 2014-2020.
In the last two years, gun thefts from cars and homes have risen in many large cities, fueling violent crime, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
The arms industry has long opposed the disclosure of some data on firearms collected by the ATF. A series of Republican-sponsored measures imposed by the National Arms Association restricted bureaucrats from providing traces and other information to the public.
The arms boom seems to have been partly due to the expiration of the assault arms ban in 2004.
After the law was repealed, the production of semi-automatic rifles and pistols, formerly classified as assault weapons, has grown steadily, especially AR rifles and pistols, now commonly referred to as “modern sport rifles” and ” modern sport pistols “, the authors of the report found.
Peyton Hendron, the suspect in the Buffalo attack, uses a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, one of many AR-15 clones available for legal purchase in the country.
Two manufacturers dominate the pistol market, the report said. Smith & Wesson accounted for 8.2 million guns produced from 2016 to 2020, 17% of the total market, and Sturm, Ruger & Company is close behind, with almost identical sales and production figures.
The data collected by ATF covers a period of 20 years, but the graphs included in the report show three periods of intense consumer instability. One was in 2013, following the re-election of President Barack Obama and the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which sparked calls for tighter gun rules. The second was in 2016, during the presidential campaign.
The third unsettled period began in 2019 and lasted until the 2020 elections and the pandemic.
During this time, arms production increased in general. But demand for semi-automatic pistols has grown at the fastest pace in history, with pistol production growing from about three million to 5.5 million a year, the report said.
The number of imported weapons of all kinds is also growing sharply, doubling from about two million a year a decade ago to more than four million in 2020, a record.
Many were first-time buyers who flooded ATF’s dashboard and email servers for information on how to buy a gun legally and which weapons are best for personal protection, an ATF official said.
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