are handguns; rifles are the modal category, constituting 35–40 percent of annual domestic firearms production. Relatively few of these firearms—only about 150,000—are exported from the United States. By comparison, tabulations from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Foreign Trade Division (see Thurman, 2006) indicate that 844,866 handguns were imported to the United States in 2004, most from Austria (29 percent), Brazil (24 percent), and Germany (17 percent). Nearly twice as many handguns were imported to the United States as rifles (489,740); an additional 71,625 shotguns and combination guns were imported in 2004 (Thurman, 2006).

However, the enabling action for entry in a national RBID is not the production of a firearm or its arrival in the United States; rather, it is the sale of a firearm. The previously cited firearms manufacture statistics do not directly correspond to annual sales to individual customers; they include production for military and law enforcement purposes, and they include guns that may sit in inventory rather than be quickly sold. The ATF estimates about 4.5 million “new firearms, including approximately about 2 million handguns, are sold in the United States” each year (U.S. Bureau