Importation of firearms: 2010 through 2014

[running-man]

So I was looking through the ATF website for some unrelated information when I came across some interesting powerpoint presentations.  They basically spell out the commerce of firearms for a given year.  I was able to find the reports from 2011 to 2015 which had import data broken down by country of origin from 2010 to 2014 (1 year lag).

2010, look at how few Chinese guns are coming in but how many we see from Russia even though the VRA is severely limiting what can come across the pond.  Lots of VEPRs and new production Saigas along with maybe a bunch of Mosin Nagants and old Nagant revolvers:


2011, seeing a bit of a jump in Chinese imports of rifles, but not a huge increase.  Likely the first T53s and maybe the J&G $400 batch of Sino-Banian T56s.  Russia increased its output of handguns from 1000 to 16000, and according to the VRA they are most likely Nagant revolvers, wow:


2012, look at the absolute flood of guns (T56s and T53s) that came in with China being the country of manufacture.  There's all our Century import Sino-Banians and possibly the very early IOs.  Russia has a bit of a dropoff in handguns but is still hanging in there rifle-wise:


2013, big dropoff in Chinese rifles.  These would be the first batch SKS imports from TGI and second batch IO.  Russian handguns have cratered as the Nagants run out but rifles still going strong through:


2014, last of the Chinese SKSs come in (second batch of TGIs, third batch of IOs, and the small mom and pops like Foxtrot Limas).  Russian imports fall through the floor due to sanctions stemming from the action in Ukraine and the Crimea:


Interesting to see the progressions.  We also have this UN data of arms transfers specifically from Albania to be able to break things down even more.  In 2012, the T56 flood begins in earnest, which is consistent with the Chinese import flood seen in the ATF reports.  It appears that 14831 of the 47821 were T56s. 


I was surprised to see that the 2013 and 2014 batches of Chinese guns was so small.  The larger 2012 imports dwarf them by comparison.  Adding everything up gives us a ceiling of around 14.8k + 4.1k + 4.0k = 22.9k Sino-Banian SKSs at most. 

[Loose}{Cannon]

Thats alot of banians.  Lol

[armedhippie]

Thanks for the write up RM    Very interesting read.

[Dannyboy53]

Fascinating Sir, thank you for your efforts running-man!

[jjjxlr8]

Thanks for posting that, running-man.  Very interesting stuff!

[running-man]

No problem guys. I did a bit more digging at the UN site and found a big discrepancy. Here's the UN report from Albania in 2011:



30k T53s in 2011 yet the U.S. Data says there were only 1450 Chinese rifles imported in that year. I guess it could be that the 30k T53s weren't logged in the U.S. Data until later. There are certainly quite a few unaccounted for out of the 47,821 in '12. It sure didn't seem like there were 30k T53s sold in the short time they were being offered though.  Makes you wonder if there is an extra zero in the UN data or something...

[Loose}{Cannon]

How do we know the 30 is just t53?  Wouldn't that be all 'rifles and carbines'?

[running-man]

Just going off the "remarks / description of items" column. I assumed that if it was other types, they would have broken it down line by line like they did in 2012.  Hard to say. Something doesn't jive though.

[Loose}{Cannon]

Oh.. I see.    I had to swipe right on my phone to see that column.

Hmmmm....