Gun manufacturing in 2020 hit record high amid rising violence

Gun manufacturing in the United States increased from 3.9 million units in 2000 to 11.3 million in 2020, as US gun buyers purchased firearms at a higher rate than ever, said a federal report.

The report, which was released on Tuesday, is the first to assess gun trafficking in the US in more than two decades and was done by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. It found that the number of guns manufactured in the past 22 years had increased by 187 percent.

Gary M. Restaino, ATF's interim director, wrote in the report that the agency released the data to "prevent diversion of these firearms from the legal to the illegal market".

The data showed that sales of guns surged amid times of uncertainty, including the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 general election.

In 2019 and 2020, demand for semi-automatic handguns rose at the fastest rate ever, as the number of pistols manufactured rose from 3 million to 5.5 million annually.

The number of imported guns also rose, from around 2 million per year 10 years ago to 4 million in 2020.

Since 2009, gun buyers have increasingly chosen to purchase Glock-type semi-automatic handguns－mostly for personal protection－over rifles.

Gun buyers were able to buy the firearms at such high rates after taking advantage of loosened restrictions put in place by the Supreme Court, Congress and Republican-controlled state legislatures.

Untraceable weapons

At least 19,344 ghost guns, which tend to be homemade on 3D printers and are largely untraceable, were also found by law enforcement last year. The number of these guns manufactured rose tenfold when compared with the number in 2016.

Most crimes in the US are carried out with guns manufactured legally but obtained by criminals. The report found that at least 39,147 guns were stolen from licensed gun dealers between 2016 and 2020, and there were losses of 45,346 firearms in that period.

A surge in gun manufacturing also happened just before the expiration of the assault weapons ban in 2004, reported The New York Times.

The report found that after the law lapsed, "manufacture of the types of semi-automatic rifles and pistols previously designated to be assault weapons steadily increased, particularly AR-type rifles and pistols, which are now commonly referred to as 'modern sporting rifles' and 'modern sporting pistols'".

Last year, US President Joe Biden ordered the ATF to collect and analyze 20 years of gun data after a series of mass shootings across the US.

That met with opposition from the gun industry and the National Rifle Association, and led to restricting officials at the bureau from releasing trace data and other information to the public.

The ATF report was released three days after 10 people were shot and killed and three others wounded at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. Ten of the dead were black. Payton Gendron, who is white, allegedly deliberately targeted blacks in the predominantly black neighborhood.

In 2020, gun homicides were at their highest levels in 26 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They remained high in 2021, the agency said.

The US is home to approximately 400 million guns, according to the Small Arms Survey, an organization that monitors gun ownership.