The National Instant Check System recorded 293,581,016 checks from November 1998 through July 2018.
If the entire supply of guns in civilian hands is "about" 300 million, then everyone got their gun after November 1998 and everyone who had a gun before that day must have sold it to someone else when they replaced it.
Balderdash!
From 1986 to 2016: 214,693,912 firearms were added to the supply.
There were guns in America long before 1986 and ATF made the numbers accessible.
Somehow I doubt it was as few as 85,306,088.
There were 7.5 million Winchester '94s made. Most of them before 1986, let alone 1998.
There were millions of single-action Army's made.
There's millions of Garands.
Hundreds of thousands of other guns.
Weaponsman (RIP) delved into this before. Since he posted, 38+ million more guns have been manufactured and imported... actually more since I don't have 2017 or 2018's numbers!
These numbers are just what the manufacturers are declaring and what the NICS system records.
If Willard gives or sells me a gun, it doesn't go through NICS.
If I buy a C&R gun it doesn't go through NICS.
The 300 million guns was an ATF estimate for the UN. They revised it lately to 400 million, but again, it is an estimate. Nobody knows for sure.
ReplyDelete"Nobody knows for sure." That alone is why gun control will always fail.
DeleteExactly! I've read stories of Europeans still owning, and occasionally using, weapons they "got" during WWII - the weapon being outlawed for 70 years hasn't stopped them.
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