People don’t usually look forward to two-year-old news with eager anticipation, but in the case of the firearms industry, production data collected by the ATF is withheld for two years. Right now, in August, 2009, we are only now being told about firearms production figures for 2007. The reason for the information embargo is not some nefarious government conspiracy, but a willful agreement between the American gun business and the ATF to intentionally sequester the information for two years. The industry petitioned the Feds and asked them to voluntarily withhold the data for a two-year embargo out of a consensus in the industry that revealing such information prematurely could harm the industry’s competitiveness against foreign imports by betraying market trends to foreign gun companies. Meanwhile, foreign import figures are available in the same year that they’re collected. Nothing like home field advantage. Foreign firearms imports are tabulated by, of all people, the U.S. Census Bureau whereas domestic firearms production is the purview of the ATF. Census data is reported in a timely manner. With that background on why the data is so seemingly out-of-date, check out my blog entry on 2007 Firearms Production and find out who is the biggest dog on America’s gun porch.
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