File photo taken on May 31, 2014 shows surrendered handguns displayed at a gun buyback event in Los Angeles, the United States. (Xinhua/Zhang Chaoqun)
The police recovered 19,344 privately manufactured firearms, untraceable homemade weapons known as "ghost guns," in 2021, a tenfold increase since 2016.
NEW YORK, May 19 (Xinhua) -- 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.
The statistics, released by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Tuesday, "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," reported The New York Times.
The data documented a drastic shift in consumer demand among gun owners that has 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, according to the report.
Embedded in the 306-page document was another statistic that law enforcement officials find especially troubling, said the report, noting that the police recovered 19,344 privately manufactured firearms, untraceable homemade weapons known as "ghost guns," in 2021, a tenfold increase since 2016.
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," it added. ■
