It’s that time of year again: the ATF has unveiled its annual Firearms Commerce report for 2017, a comprehensive overview of—you guessed it—the state of firearms commerce in the U.S.
There’s a ton of data to pore over here. For example, the Firearms Commerce report includes a section on the total number of firearms manufactured in the United States from 1986 through 2015 (the last year for which data is available); the total number of firearms exports from 1986 through 2015; firearms imports from 1986 through 2016 broken down by firearm type, importation application and country of manufacture; the total number of FFLs from 1975 through 2016; and NFA registered weapons by state and type—AOW, machine gun, destructive device, silencer, SBR, SBS—through April 2017.
For now, we’re going to focus on silencers. The report defines the term “silencer” as follows:
Any device for silencing, muffling, or diminishing the report of a portable firearm, including any combination of parts, designed or redesigned, and intended for the use in assembling or fabricating a firearm silencer or firearm muffler, and any part intended only for use in such assembly or fabrication.
- RELATED STORY: 37 Muzzle Devices for Your AR-Pattern Rifle
According to the ATF Firearms Commerce report, these were the 10 states with the largest number of registered silencers as of April 2017:
- Texas—242,859
- Florida—85,998
- Georgia—63,021
- Ohio—52,495
- South Carolina—50,647
- Louisiana—48,903
- Alabama—48,118
- Virginia—44,014
- Utah—42,406
- Arizona—40,485
In all, there are currently 1,360,023 registered silencers in the United States. According to the ATF’s 2016 report, there were 902,805 registered silencers.
To see the complete ATF report, go to atf.gov.
