In absolute numbers, exports are still a fraction of domestic US sales, but their impact on the nations receiving them can be enormous. Since the ban ended, semiautomatic exports have totaled 3.7 million - more than doubling in just the past six years. Commerce employees help recruit foreign buyers, accompany them at the industry’s premier exhibition in Las Vegas each year, and offer an online portal to pair them with US manufacturers. The US Commerce Department has played booster and concierge to the firearm industry, even as America’s mass shootings horrify the world and gun-crime rates rise in many of the importing countries. Sources: US Census Bureau, Statistics Canada Semiautomatic American-made guns are now pouring into countries ranging from Canada, with its comparatively strict regulations, to Guatemala, where firearms are frequently diverted into the hands of criminals and the government has trampled human rights. But they’ve reached new heights since gunmakers in 2020 won a decade-long battle to streamline export approvals. The economic and political forces driving those sales were set in motion after the US assault-weapons ban expired in 2004. With about 400 million civilian firearms owned in the US, companies like Sig are seeking new buyers abroad, and they’ve found an eager ally: The federal government has helped push international sales of rapid-fire guns to record levels. It was part of a growing number of semiautomatic handguns and rifles exported by American gunmakers and linked to violent crimes. The killer’s gun, a Sig Sauer P365 - touted by the company as small enough to easily conceal yet able to hold 13 rounds - had traveled more than 8,000 miles from a factory on New Hampshire’s rocky seacoast to Thailand’s lush Nong Bua Lamphu province.
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