Only a few days after Barack Obama said that his greatest frustration were gun laws in the US, the president’s woeful record on gun control can be bleakly demonstrated in the following six graphs.
Each graph shows the number of weapons, broken down by type and then overall, manufactured in the US since 1993. That takes in three presidencies (two Democrat leaders and one Republican) and a twenty year sweep.
The data, taken from the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, demonstrates that gun manufacture actually fell during the Mr Clinton admiration and rose only slightly under Mr Bush’s.
The biggest increase is during Mr Obama’s tenure. In some case the number of specific types of guns, such as rifles, almost tripled in the twenty year period. Not one graph indicates that gun levels have done anything but rocket since Mr Obama took office.
It does not include firearms made for the US military – but does include items manufactured for export. The data also only runs up to 2013 (the latest available data) as the preceding year’s information is protected by the US’s Trade Secrets Act.
This shows the number of 'Miscellaneous' weapons purchased. We were not entirely sure what fell under this category, but according to the Bureau’s website, this can include - but probably are not limited to – items such as pistol grip firearms, starter guns and receivers.
And here, finally, are the numbers of guns overall in the US. As you might expect, it is not a pretty picture.
Additionally, even though 84,000 were injured by guns and more than 11,000 people killed by someone with a gun in 2013 (according for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) – public perception of firearm rights has only improved.
A Pew survey found that since 1993 the percentage of Americans who believed in the right of US citizens to own firearms has only increased, rising from 34 per cent to 52 per cent. Meanwhile, the percentage of those who think gun ownership control is more important has fallen – from 57 per cent to 46 per cent.
