The suspicious numbers on illegal gun trading make it necessary to look into gun manufacturing and sales for clues as to the relative size of the black markets. ATF reports that 134,284,120 guns were manufactured in the US between 1986 and 2014, which is a bit less than half of America’s current gun ownership. Some guns have been imported into the U.S. from abroad, while other guns were manufactured before 1986. The number of guns manufactured in the U.S. annually has been climbing nearly each year since around 2001. 10,847,792 were made in 2013; only 4% of these were legally exported to other countries that year. All these gun sales make the US guns and ammunitions manufacturers around $1.5 billion in profit (IBIS World), but they cost the American public $229 billion in losses due to gun violence in 2012 (Mother Jones). In other words, the benefit to the manufacturers is a fraction of the cost for the general public. If the NRA was entirely funded by the firearm manufacturers, it would not be a significant lobbying force on Capitol Hill because their profits could not afford the current payouts to politicians in behalf of gun ownership. So, who is benefiting from these policies?
A much larger profit is made by the U.S. government, as it makes from half to a third of the world’s weapons sales, with around $46 billion in export sales in 2015; over time, America has made $50 billion from selling weapons to Saudi Arabia alone; the U.S. is supplying, indiscriminately, Eastern and Western Europe, as well as in other regions with some of the deadliest conflicts (Mother Jones). The reasons for weapons ownership internationally is similar to personal motivations: countries are intimidated into warfare by perceived or real threats from their neighbors. The business of selling the tools that allow for massive armed conflicts is left to countries who can convince their citizens that the right to bear arms is more important than potential lives lost due to such ownership.
The federal Second Amendment allows for the right to keep and bear arms, but these rights are limited in a variety of different ways at the state level. Most states allow all law-abiding people to carry and conceal firearms with a permit (Texas). Twelve states have no permit requirement (Alaska). In eight states (California, New York), the rights to carry are very restricted, making it likely a permit application will be rejected. Gun laws restrict fugitives, felons with sentences over a year or those charged even with simple controlled substance (marijuana) possessions, the mentally ill, those with restraining orders, citizenship renouncers, dishonorably discharged military members, and illegal immigrants. The sale of shotguns, rifles, machine guns, and silencers is regulated by the National Firearms Act of 1934. Semi-automatic weapons are legal in most of the states. The participants in March for Our Lives are arguing for universal background checks, a ban on assault-style weapons, a federal database that would track gun sales, prohibitions for the mentally ill, and barring no-fly list members. Some of these measures are already in place, but not on the national level. Even the leaders of this movement, the kids who survived the Florida shooting, are not arguing to abolish the right to bear arms, just for minor adjustments to the code that would make mass shootings less likely.
As you can see from the statistics above, there are some intricate changes that are needed that have not been proposed. Should America stop selling weapons to foreign governments? Should Americans be banned from purchasing more than a single weapon (why would any hunter or woman in need of protection from assault need more than one gun, or two if somebody is being accosted by a gang and can shoot with both hands)? Should the American Parties be banned from using gun control in their campaigns or to raise funds from lobbyists (leaving this issue to the popular vote within states or nationally)? Is Trump concealing a weapon, and if not, why is he encouraging teachers to do so? Is a ban on handguns more urgent than a ban on the less utilized assault weapons? Are more stringent investigations into self-defense claims needed to weed out those who use this as an excuse for murder? Would a much higher percentage of Americans believe in gun control if the issue was presented in logical rather than emotional terms? If 78% of Americans do not own a gun, why would they want their neighbor to own a gun? When these questions are answered, we will start moving closer to a solution to the gun problem.
Sources Cited:
http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/12/section-3-gun-ownership-trends-and-demographics/#who-owns
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3462834/
Anna Faktorovich, Ph.D., is the Founder, Director, Designer and Editor-in-Chief of the Anaphora Literary Press, which has published over 200 titles in non-fiction, fiction and poetry.