Surge in online tutorials and 3D printing in recent decades is fueling a boom in homemade guns, ATF finds.
As gun-related deaths in America reach new highs, a new government report shows that the number of firearms made in the U.S. has increased exponentially over the last two decades.
Domestic gun makers produced 11.3 million firearms in 2020 (the latest year for which data is available), roughly triple the 3.9 million that were made in 2000, according to a report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Over that span, a time when the U.S. population increased 18%, the number of firearms churned out every year jumped 250%.
As part of that trend, the use of so-called ghost guns — firearms manufactured privately that are often hard to trace — also has ballooned, the ATF also found.
The report is part of an effort by the Biden administration to crack down on gun violence. The White House issued a series of directives last year to curb the epidemic of shootings, which the government dubbed a public health epidemic. A record number of Americans died of gun-related injuries in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
Source: Number of guns made in the U.S. nearly tripled since 2000