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30 million + ‘Black Rifles’ in Circulation

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Back in 1986, the Colt AR-15A2 HBAR was where its at…

Recent firearms industry production numbers point to modern semi-auto sporting rifles, such as AR-15s and AK variants, as being extremely popular with consumers.

The figures, updated via the recent ATF Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report– which includes data on guns made and imported in 2022– combined with past reports by federal regulators, show some 30,711,000 such rifles entering the market since 1990 and 2022.

The data, compiled by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade organization for the American firearms industry, details the rise in demand and production of “black rifles” over 32 years. 

In 1990, with such guns tightly regulated by the federal “assault weapon” ban, just 74,000 were produced or imported– and those had to be made compliant via featureless stocks and 10-round magazines.

By 1994, when the ban had expired, those figures had climbed to 274,000.

They approached 500,000 in 2007 and hit 1 million in 2009– a span covering the campaign of President Obama for the White House and his first year in office.

In 2013 it hit over 2 million.

In 2021, 3.7 million. 

That’s per year, btw.

Figures don’t even count…

Detachable magazine semi-auto rifles have been a go-to for Americans for generations.

Remember that these figures don’t include privately made firearms crafted from 80 percent AR lowers or AK/G3 receiver flats, or guns that entered the marketplace before 1990.

While black rifles were not as common as they are today, Colt produced SP-1 sporter-style ARs going back to the mid-1960s, the Ruger Mini-14 entered the market in 1973, and the Springfield Armory M1A in 1974.

“If you’re a hunter, camper, or collector, you’ll want the AR-15 Sporter,” reads the circa-1963 ad copy. By 1969, something like 15,000 SP1s had been made.

Plus you have more than 250,000 M-1 Carbines that were sold as surplus through the Director of Civilian Marksmanship program during the 1960s along with warehouses of clones made specifically for consumers by companies like Universal (426,000 made), Iver Johnson (96,700 made) and Plainfield (112,000 made). 

These things were sold by the hundreds of thousands in the 1960s-80s

The all-seeing eye (of the networked FFL)

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Go ahead, tell me you wouldn't shop there...

Go ahead, tell me you wouldn’t shop there…

Following the news that the terrorist in the Orlando attack was able to legally purchase his firearms from a local store after he was turned down by one licensed dealer just days before, I spoke a couple weeks ago with software developer and long-time gun owner Seth Banks who came up with an idea that gun shops could help network to keep this from happening in the future.

The idea is simple. A private network for verified Federal Firearms Licensees to share and report incidents they have with suspicious buyers, and communicate with each other. When one shop in the network posts an alert, other dealers within driving distance are alerted via email, in-app notification, and/or text message.

“FFLs deny gun purchases for all sorts of reasons; including mental health, straw sales, intoxication, violent comments in the store, etc. … FFLs are on the front line protecting our community from bad actors already. Why not make their jobs easier?” Banks argued.

And with that Gun Shop Watchlist was formed.

More in my column at Guns.com

The strange case of the flying Grizzly and its 75mm gun

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With the lead up to the invasion of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany in World War II, the U.S. Army needed some serious air support on tap. While there were a number of capable aircraft on hand, such as the P-47 Thunderbolt and the P-51 Mustang, each with a half dozen .50 caliber M2 heavy machine guns, the Army wanted something…bigger. What they got was an aircraft named the Grizzly and this flying bear was, quite literally, a cannon with wings.

Since the airplane took to the sky in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, the U.S. Army had a leg up in flying war machines. It was an Army Captain, Charles de Forest Chandler, who took the first machine gun up on an experimental craft and used it effectively to hit targets on the ground. By WWI, the first .30 caliber belt and drum fed light machine guns went airborne. By 1939, the Germans were flying with 13mm and 20mm cannon, while some U.S. planes (the P-39) carried cannons as large as 39mm.

In 1943, the U.S. Army Air Force in the Pacific took a few B-25 Mitchell bombers and installed a single-shot T9E1 75mm cannon, the same gun used on the Sherman tank, in the front of the bomber, firing through the nose.

The large tube at the front of this B-25 that looks like a sewer drainpipe? Yeah, that's a cannon.

The large tube at the front of this B-25 that looks like a sewer drainpipe? Yeah, that’s a cannon.

These huge flying artillery pieces could vaporize enemy planes (it happened at least once) as well as sink Japanese ships with just a few well-placed shots. Of course, the plane lost 40mph airspeed every time it fired, but hey, it was spitting out a 3-inch wide artillery shell.

The B-25G/H models had to have an airman upfront hand-loading the 75mm cannon, which was not very efficient.

The B-25G/H models had to have an airman upfront hand-loading the 75mm cannon, which was not very efficient.

These ‘cannon-nosed’ B-25s proved so popular and successful that a special model of the 75mm gun, the T13E1 / M5 , made lighter and especially for use in an aircraft, was produced for the B-25H series bombers. Nevertheless, they still suffered from the fact that they were single-shot weapons, which had to be reloaded, by hand, by an airman heaving shells back and forth through the nose of the cramped bomber. Which was a bear of a problem that led to the Grizzly, and its mother-beautiful semi-automatic M10 75mm gun

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Read the rest in my column at Firearms Talk