NSSF: Nearly 18-Million Modern Sporting Rifles In Private Hands

The National Shooting Sports Foundation is out with some new facts and figures on firearm production, and there are some fascinating data points that demonstrate Americans aren’t interested in giving up their right to keep and bear arms any time soon.

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The industry trade group reports that there are now more than 420-million firearms in the hands of American gun owners, and nearly 18-million of them are modern sporting rifles. That’s a full three million more guns than Eric Swalwell and Beto O’Rourke talked about confiscating, and the numbers are only going to grow.

In fact, the NSSF says that in 2017, more than half of all the rifles manufactured in the United States were modern sporting rifles, and while we don’t have the numbers for 2018 and the current year, the trends in the industry would indicate that if anything, the percentage of semi-automatic rifles has grown since 2017.

According to the NSSF, there were approximately 2.8 million rifles produced in total in 2017, and about 1.5 million of them were semi-automatic rifles. That’s in addition to the approximately 4.4 million pistols and revolvers manufactured that same year, and the vast majority of those were semi-automatic firearms as well.

In addition to the more than 7-million guns manufactured in the U.S. in 2017, the firearms industry also produced over 8-billion rounds of ammunition that same year. Ammunition has been a favorite target of Elizabeth Warren, who wants to jack up the taxes on ammunition by 50%, must be salivating at the thought of the billions of dollars in revenue she could extract from the wallets and purses of gun owners if she’s elected.

Of course, Elizabeth Warren doesn’t care that her increased taxes are going to hit lower-income Americans the hardest, making it impossible for some to purchase the ammunition that they need for training, much less self-defense. In fact, she’s fine with that. Her goal is to reduce the gun-related violence by 80%, and in order to do that she’s planning on dramatically reducing the number of legal gun owners through high tax rates, gun licensing laws, gun bans, and more.

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Meanwhile, in the real world, violent crime is declining even as gun sales are near record highs. More guns doesn’t equate to more crime, no matter how much Warren and other anti-gun activists believe that to be the case. The FBI crime stats tell a different story, where the country has historically low levels of violent crime and homicide, while nearly 100-million Americans are exercising their right to keep and bear arms.

Warren and her fellow Democrats running for president have gun ownership and the firearms industry in their sights, but it seems like that’s driving many Americans to keep, bear, and buy arms instead of backing their gun control agenda.

 

 

 

 

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