In the political
watershed year of 2016 that saw a generally pro-gun Donald Trump
elected as president and anti-gun candidate Hillary Clinton defeated,
the United States’ licensed firearms manufacturers expended a lot
of energy making new products.
Based upon
statistics provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
Explosives, in 2016 these properly licensed gun makers cranked out
11,497,441 new firearms. This is the last year for which the ATF has
current, final and official figures.
The reason for this
apparent reporting lag time is that the country’s gun makers have
until the following April to notify the ATF of gun production figures
for the preceding calendar year. Given that such technical data may
have errors or else be in need of further refinement, finalized
numbers typically don’t see the light of reporting day for several
months after each December 31st, says ATF spokeswoman Suzanne
Dabkowski with the agency’s Cleveland office.
It must be stated up
front that all figures compiled by the ATF represent the total number
of firearms made per gun type classification, not sales. It is
entirely conceivable that many of these 2016-made firearms remain in
the inventories of wholesalers and retailers, Dabkowski says as well.
Also, ATF-available
figures are for firearms made in the United States, not those imported,
which is an entirely different set of numbers. For interpretation purposes, firearms production is defined as being “firearms
including separate frames or receivers, actions of barreled actions,
manufactured and disposed of in commerce during the (documented)
calendar year,” the ATF’s report states.
In all, and based
upon the most current, finalized data, the United States has more
than 11,000 ATF-licensed firearms manufacturers, of which more than
400 are based in Ohio. Every U.S. firearms manufacturer pays a $150
fee to the ATF for a license, which is good for three years, Dabkowski says.
Licensed
manufacturers ranged from small gun shops that may have produced only
a handful of firearms - or even as few as one – to the big names in
the industry on the order of Ruger, Remington, Smith & Wesson,
O.F. Mossberg, and Colt.
As a short history
lesson and for comparison sake, for 2015 the total firearms
production in the United States topped out at 9,358,661 units. In
fact, based on ATF data going back to at least 2010, the year 2016
easily eclipsed any other in terms of seeing such a volume of
firearms produced in the United States, though perhaps interestingly
as well the number of shotguns made in the U.S. has fallen over the
past few years.
The ATF even breaks
down manufacturing by individual states with the subject matter
including the gun maker’s name and hometown and by firearms type
made.
A close look at the figures does demonstrate the importance of
the handgun market to America’s gun makers. ATF documentation shows that for 2016 the number of new semi-automatic pistols
made in the U.S. was an astounding 4,720,075 units while the number
of revolvers made here was 856,291. In 2010 those statistics were
2,258,450 and 558,927, respectively.
Statistically
refined further, the ATF-supplied numbers showed that for 2016, 9mm
pistols ruled the manufacturing roost with some 2.28 million units
made in the U.S. This caliber figure-type was followed by
.380-caliber pistols at 1.13 million units. The manufacturing of
.25-caliber pistols actually outstripped the making of .32-caliber
pistols, though each figure was tiny: 13,141 units verses 10,175
units, respectively. And in the “to .50” caliber statistical
branch were 837,535 semi-automatic handguns.
The making of
.22-caliber semiautomatic pistols stood at 447,315 units in 2016; its
sibling revolver category figure being 320,775 units in 2016. Other
noteworthy revolver-making figures for 2016 showed that 248,144,
.38-caliber wheel guns were made in the U.S. during 2016 while
182,564, .357 Magnum revolvers were produced, along with 51,451 up “to .44 Magnum” revolvers, and 45,506 “to .50”
caliber revolvers
Meanwhile, the ATF
report states that something on the order of 4.24 million rifles were
made in the U.S. during 2016 as were 848,617 shotguns.
As was mentioned
earlier, the ATF does list firearms made on a state-by-state basis,
adding by type: handguns, rifles, shotguns, and miscellaneous. More
on that topic in a moment.
For Ohio in 2016,
the number of licensed gun manufacturers producing handguns totaled
26. These handgun makers ranged from eight companies that made one
handgun each to the 90,900 handguns made by the Strassels Machine
Company of Mansfield, the 32,400 handguns made by the Haskell
Manufacturing Company of Lima, and the 24,100 units made by the
Iberia Firearms Company of Galion.
Ohio actually had
more licensed rifle makers in 2016 than handgun manufacturers. Make
that many more rifle manufacturers, though it would appear that the
bulk of these gun makers were custom gunsmiths. In all during 2016,
the ATF cataloged 62 rifle manufacturers in Ohio although 45 of them
produced 10 or fewer rifles each.
The ATF-licensed
Ohio-based rifle maker producing the greatest number of firearms in
this category for 2016 was the Mansfield-based Strassells Machine
Company which reported making 58,600 rifle units in that year.
For shotguns, the
number of licensed manufacturers for Ohio numbered only four in 2016,
and ranged from just one shotgun made by Delta Group Technology LLC
in Belle Center to 1,041 shotguns for the Ithaca Gun Company in Upper
Sandusky. Compare those two numbers against the 339,507 shotguns made just by Remington’s historic gun-making plant in Ilon, New York.
In the
quirky-sounding – though official jargon of the ATF – are the
so-called “miscellaneous firearms.” This is a catch-all
classification for items that require an ATF-issued firearms
manufacturing permit but which are not products that fit neatly into
the handgun, shotgun, and rifle categories, Dabkowski says.
“A couple of good
examples are silencers (suppressors) and pistol-gripped shotguns,
both of which have become very popular in recent years,” Dabkowski
said.
In this category for 2016, Ohio had 14 ATF-licensed manufacturers with the most units being produced by the CBO Acquisition Company of Cleveland, producing 9,035 units.
JFrischk@Ameritech.net
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