How many 1911 handguns are produced annually?

[mark dye]

I'm not sure if this is the appropriate spot to stick this question. If it is in the wrong spot, I'm sure that the mods will move it. I am trying to satisfy a personal curiosity. I'd like to know roughly how many 1911 style handguns are produced or imported into the US annually. Additionally, I'd like to know the relative breakdown by manufacturer. The BATF website gives production numbers for domestic companies. Unfortunately, it only gives total numbers broken down by caliber not by model. This makes it easy to figure numbers for companies like Kimber and STI (since they don't make any non-1911's). With companies like Springfield and S&W, one would have to separate the 1911's from other models in the same calibers. I've found that some companies are not ashamed of production numbers, while others regard them as proprietary secrets. Does anyone out there have another resource or way to calculate the relative numbers? For that matter can anyone tell me how many 1911's are produced by a specific company.

Mark Dye

[G-ManBart]

Can't answer your question....an interesting one at that, but STI is now making a Single Action Army replica called the Texican.

Edited October 8, 2007 by G-ManBart

[Rik]

Here are ATF numbers for 2006. Can't get an exact nunber from this, but it's the best I could do. Looks like this only lists those manufactured in U.S. and Springfield must be classed as an import.

ATF 2006 Hand Guns

Rik

[shred]

I'm guessing the ATF doesn't know, unless there's a spot on the manufacturing paperwork that says "This is a 1911-pattern gun [Y/N]"-- the yellow sheets don't go to that level of detail, so then you're down to sales numbers from individual companies and lots of them can be very secretive about those.

[mark dye]

I am pretty sure that the BATF doesn't have an exact count by model...why would they. They only care about collecting the excise tax on the prouction. For anyone who is interested, I found a lot of cool numbers on shootingindustry.com. They compile the stuff from the ATF and also have a lot of cool import/export numbers. Unfortunately, I'm still not much closer to answering my original question.

Mark Dye

[Carlos]

Maybe this should go in "What I Like" but anyone else notice how many small manufacturers there were? Even a known name like Briley - they only made a few handguns last year.

There are also plenty of folks out there that make their own guns at home for their own use & they are not required to report to that list.