Someday, The Gods of the Lottery will smile upon me!

A 2007 report for the World Bank,^[1] by Oxford University economist Phillip Killicoat, estimated there were about 500 million firearms in the world.^[1]
The same report placed the annual number of firearms deaths worldwide at between 200,000 and 400,000, with only a minority of these — 20,000 to 100,000 — in “conflict settings”.^[1]
Another report by the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey^[2] the same year said there were at least 639 million weapons in circulation, and probably many more. The Small Arms Survey is partly funded by NATO.^[3]
This page lists more than 100 small arms designs which have been produced in numbers exceeding one million since the late 18th century.
Added together, production of these types adds up to roughly 400-650 million. Many more types have been made in the hundreds of thousands.
In the U.S. alone, an estimated 270 to 310 million firearms are in legal private ownership, including 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles and 86 million shotguns.^[4]
More than half the world’s firearms are concentrated in the U.S.; this is reflected by the many sporting guns and non-military handguns that appear high on this list.
Many of the firearms on this list are military weapons which were used in the two world wars, so it is unsurprising that they were manufactured in such high numbers.
Others are civilian hunting and sporting weapons, which generally sell very well in countries such as the U.S. and Canada.
Many of those produced have been destroyed, deactivated or fallen into disrepair, but others will have been kept in working order and sold or passed on from one owner to another down the years.^[5]
Estimates put the production of firearm cartridges at 10-14 billion per year according to Oxfam^[6] — 27-38 million bullets a day.
Sources for the figures on this list range from manufacturer’s serial number lists to books and magazines on firearms, studies on arms proliferation and websites on firearms history and collecting.
One problem is that various “respectable” sources disagree on key facts. Production figures for the Kalashnikov AK-47, for example, are quoted as anywhere between 30 and 150 million.
One of those sources, the Small Arms Survey, claimed in 2007 that 60-80 percent of firearms are not manufactured by the original producer, but by other companies, state arsenals or small workshops.
Of that production, it said, 57 percent was licensed, 24 percent unlicensed and the status of the remaining 19 percent “uncertain”.^[7]
Russia has been singled out for criticism over the past three decades for small arms and light weapons proliferation,^[8][9]despite U.S. dominance of the arms export trade.^[10]
This may account for the tendency for estimates of Kalashnikov rifle production to be revised steeply upward.
In his 2001 book ‘The AK-47’, Chris McNab claims it is “feasible” that production of the Chinese Type 56 assault rifle – a license-built AK-47 copy – reached 15-20 million.^[11] McNab bases that estimate on the “apparent” strength of the Chinese armed forces of 10 million (3 million regular troops and 5-7 million reservists), along with presumed export sales. However, the true strength of the People’s Liberation Army was around 1.5 million in 2013.^[12]
Furthermore, as late as the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war most Chinese soldiers were armed with another weapon, the Type 56 carbine (an SKScopy), and were soon after re-equipped with the Type 81 assault rifle, followed later by the QBZ-95 and QBZ-03, all of which are unrelated to the Kalashnikov design. This is not to single out Chris McNab: other western sources make similar claims.^[13]
Research into arms proliferation is often carried out by organisations with an interest in arms control and limitation. The aforementioned Small Arms Survey’s mission statement asserts:

The proliferation of small arms and light weapons represents a grave threat to human security. The unchecked spread of these weapons has exacerbated inter- and intra-state conflicts, contributed to human rights violations, undermined political and economic development, destabilized communities, and devastated the lives of millions of people.^[14]

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership called the Small Arms Survey “biased” on the basis of that statement.^[15]

Designs produced in numbers exceeding 1 million[edit]

Designs produced in numbers from 100,000 to 1,000,000[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Colt serial numbers:http://proofhouse.com/colt/
• High Standard serial numbers: http://www.highstandard.info/datapublic/serial/
• Ruger firearms: http://www.ruger.com/