The Business of Guns

The manufacturers, retailers, and vendors of guns do a brisk business each day in the United States. The millions of guns bought and sold add up to billions of dollars of revenue and thousands of jobs, boosting city, state, and national economies. Major manufacturers can churn out millions of guns in a single year, while tens of thousands of individual retailers make gun ownership available throughout the nation. On the surface, purchasing a firearm from a gun store in the United States requires passing a series of legal hurdles, including a background check. However, gun stores are far from the only venue in the country to purchase a gun. Gun shows and Internet sales make it possible to connect buyers and sellers with as little oversight as the sale of a television, reducing or even eliminating the security checks on the exchange of deadly weapons.