--- title: Gun Control Laws in US, UK, Australia Draw on Global History description: Governments have long faced a problem: they need gun manufacturers but don't generate enough demand to keep them in good health in peacetime canonical: https://time.com/5231027/economic-history-gun-control/ author: Priya Satia article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-04-10T15:45:01.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:43:20.234Z article:section: History og:title: Gun Control Laws in US, UK, Australia Draw on Global History og:description: The global history of gun manufacturing has serious implications for the situation today og:url: https://time.com/5231027/economic-history-gun-control/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3719d577b020b439/69892d0de76ad26b2b6319f1/bsa.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2405 og:image:height: 1353 og:image:alt: Birmingham Small Arms Company, circa 1930s og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Gun Control Laws in US, UK, Australia Draw on Global History twitter:description: The global history of gun manufacturing has serious implications for the situation today twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3719d577b020b439/69892d0de76ad26b2b6319f1/bsa.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Hidden Link Between Mass Shootings in the U.S. and the Global Economic History of the Firearms Industry > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: This Is How The NRA Got So Powerful [Watch (HLS stream): This Is How The NRA Got So Powerful](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/M3qXfmOi.m3u8) (4:39)  _Published 2018-03-23. This Is How The NRA Got So Powerful_ by [Priya Satia](https://time.com/author/priya-satia/) ## Priya Satia Apr 10, 2018 3:45 PM UTC  Interior of the Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA), Circa 1930s. Interior of the Birmingham Small Arms Company Limited (BSA), Circa 1930s. Mirrorpix/Getty Images by [Priya Satia](https://time.com/author/priya-satia/) ## Priya Satia Apr 10, 2018 3:45 PM UTC Those in favor of firearms control in the United States today often [point](https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/protesters-pack-streets-of-washington-for-biggest-/3370309/) in exasperated envy at [laws](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/07/a-land-without-guns-how-japan-has-virtually-eliminated-shooting-deaths/260189/) in [countries](http://www.businessinsider.com/does-gun-control-work-2018-2) like [Australia](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/10/03/how-australia-beat-the-gun-lobby-and-passed-gun-control/?utm%5Fterm=.dbd7c9a7cce1) and the [United Kingdom](http://www.businessinsider.com/canada-australia-japan-britain-gun-control-2013-1). Why can’t the [United States](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2015/12/4/9850572/gun-control-us-japan-switzerland-uk-canada) behave like these civilized countries?, they ask. The reality is that these countries were able to pass their strict laws partly _because_ American laws are so lax. At just 4.4% of the world’s population, Americans own roughly a third of all the firearms in the world. According to a 2007 [survey](http://www.smallarmssurvey.org/publications/by-type/yearbook/small-arms-survey-2007.html), American civilians own about 275 million of the world’s 875 million firearms. For the world’s gun manufacturers, this fraction of the world’s population is their largest single market. As long as it stays open, they can count on business, and governments around the world can feel secure about the health of an industry they rely on for defense. Since firearms became central to warfare, governments have faced a structural problem: They need gun manufacturers but do not generate enough demand themselves to keep those manufacturers in good health by serving the military alone. Peace, in particular, is bad for gunmakers. The global history of governments’ and gun manufacturers’ efforts to cope with this basic problem is not fully understood, but it has had serious implications for the situation today. The Glorious Revolution of 1689 established a new regime in Britain. It had to defend itself against rebels at home and abroad who wanted to restore the ousted king. To that end, the new government set about developing a new hub of firearms manufacturing in Birmingham, to ensure an alternate source for guns in case rebels captured London’s firearms manufacturing capacity. For the next century, Britain was almost always at war, and Birmingham’s gunmakers thrived: from an initial annual production of tens of thousands of arms, they could produce millions by 1815\. The government also launched its own factory, at Enfield, to further diffuse the industry. To keep this industry healthy during interludes of peace—in an era in which firearms possession was largely an entitlement of the upper classes—the government helped it find other outlets. British gunmakers sold firearms all over the world: in West Africa, as part of the slave trade; in North America, to Native Americans and colonial settlers; in South Asia, as part of trade and conquest. Occasionally, British officials worried about arming their own enemies. But inevitably, the logic prevailed that not selling guns to potential enemies would merely send those enemies to a rival supplier, like the French, and the British would forfeit both profit and influence. The government also encouraged gunmakers to diversify into products that _could_ be sold to British civilians: buttons, buckles, harpoons, swords, bells. Diversification became more necessary in the 19th century as the empire’s fear of armed colonial rebellion increased. The Birmingham Small Arms company (BSA), the largest privately owned rifle manufactory in Europe until the 1890s and the largest in the U.K. through World War I, also made bicycles, motorcycles and cars. The government’s machine-gun supplier, Vickers, made various civilian goods, too. This strategy freed the government from worrying overly about the health of its firearms industry. In 1934, it selected a Czech design for the new army light machine gun, over protests from BSA and Vickers. After World War II, the Ministry of Defense stopped maintaining an R&D team for small arms design. BSA ceased military rifle production in 1961 after a government decision to let them go. They turned out other metal goods and motorcycles until they were edged out of those businesses in the early 1970s. The Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield, meanwhile, did develop and supply the SA80, the standard postwar military firearm. In 1985, it and other government arms factories were made into a public corporation, Royal Ordnance, which, in 1987, was bought by British Aerospace, the then-reprivatized company in which Vickers had merged during the 1960 nationalization of the aircraft industry. That year, 1987, was also the year of the mass shooting known as the [Hungerford massacre](http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,147460,00.html). Gun control in the U.K. got tighter as the gun industry shrank to vanishing point. The next year saw both the closure of the Enfield unit _and_ amendments tightening existing firearms controls. After the [Dunblane](http://world.time.com/2012/12/17/when-massacres-force-change-lessons-from-the-u-k-and-australia/) [shooting](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,984300,00.html) in 1996, private possession of handguns was banned almost entirely; thousands of guns were surrendered. By that point there was essentially no firearms industry to put up a protest; U.K. military arms were mostly sourced abroad. In Australia, too, passage of tight gun control laws in 1996 was eased by the absence of a major Australian gun industry. The United States followed a different path. To be sure, American gunmakers also diversified to cope with whimsical government demand. Most famously, Remington, the country’s oldest rifle maker, turned out sewing machines and typewriters during the slump in firearm demand after the Civil War. But, for the most part, American manufacturers could rely on sales to civilians to cope with lulls in government demand. Between the world wars, the federal government and the American gun industry both opposed suggestions for controls on sales to civilians, out of fear that they would endanger an industry essential to national defense. During the Cold War, the U.S. became the new firearms depot of the world. When the Swedish firearms manufacturer Interdynamic AB could not find a civilian market for its TEC-9 submachine gun at home, its Miami subsidiary Intratec sold it to Americans, who made it a [notorious](https://www.thetrace.org/2017/06/ups-mass-shooting-california-san-francisco-gun/) instrument of mass shootings. If gun-control advocates focus on the [NRA](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/florida-shooting-nra-donations-politicians-gun-control-advert-republicans-parkland-school-a8221681.html) and [politicians](https://twitter.com/chelseahandler/status/963897314002661376?ref%5Fsrc=twsrc%5Etfw&ref%5Furl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2018%2F02%2F16%2Fnra-money-isnt-why-gun-control-efforts-are-failing-commentary.html) who [take money](http://time.com/5160318/florida-school-shooting-nra-donations/) from the group as the sole obstacles to sensible gun control laws in the U.S., they’ll be missing a larger structural reality: selling arms to American civilians has become crucial to an industry on which both the United States government and governments around the world depend. Indeed, it is the American public’s very division over gun control that keeps the industry healthy, given the saturation of the civilian market: without [panic buying](https://slate.com/technology/2018/03/sales-of-ghost-guns-appear-to-be-booming-after-parkland.html) triggered by recurring fear of impending controls, companies like Remington and Smith & Wesson face dismal prospects. (Remington has now filed for [bankruptcy](http://time.com/5215326/remington-gun-company-bankruptcy/), though its operations remain unaffected.) The more the rest of the world limits gun possession, the more American civilians keep the world’s firearms makers in business. The NRA and gun manufacturers benefit from promoting intense cultural and ideological commitment to their reading of the Second Amendment, but so does every government that needs firearms for its military and law enforcement services. Studies have [shown](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/world/americas/mass-shootings-us-international.html) that the presence of astronomical numbers of guns in the United States is a specific cause of the high rate of mass shootings, but the presence of those guns has become a matter of global security. This vision of global security has thus perversely come to depend on continual insecurity about mass shootings in the United States.  Penguin _Priya Satia is the author of_ [Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/548047/empire-of-guns-by-priya-satia/9780735221864/)_, available now._ ## Transcript Everyone knows the National Rifle Association super powerful how to get that here's a brief history. And it was founded in 871. A civil war veterans concerned that their fellow yankees have forgotten hash and they started the NRA to fix. The whole idea was to promote rifle practice. Over the next few decades and Harry waited. Gently into politics in the 1930s for instance when gangsters with Tommy guns were all over the news congress debated a bill called the firearms act. Which is widely known as the first Republican controlled now. NRA opposed it lobbying congress to take out any mention pistols and revolvers but they were willing to live with regulations on some machine guns and shot him. So by today's standards pretty let's fast forward to the 1960s. We have civil rights movement urban riots. Students protesting the Vietnam War are rising crime rates and a number of high profile patients from JFK. And knocking him. To many mainstream America there's just this feeling that violence was overtaking us I. So in 1968. When the black Panthers began to carry guns as an act of Civil Disobedience. It was a bridge too far for middle class especially white Americans. Bob makers across the country and liberals and conservatives alike began pushing for gun control the Republican party's national park even supported gun control. On tough on crime grounds and in California governor Ronald Reagan led to gotten on charts. But there reaction must act. Gun owners and especially rural conservatives are ready alienated by rap and cultural shifts began to worry. Was the government coming for their hands. So they began mobilizing. Lobby him and joining me and I. Between 1964 and 1980s and Aaron membership tripled. And 600000. To nearly two million and its coffers exploded with near Dix and an hour is old guard. They still a lot of Danner and shooting clan. It was a weird time in 1977. New and banner it was extremely heartened about opposing all gun control. I am against the kind of gun control that is being talked in the congress of the United States. I see it is only something that would make it difficult for an honest citizen to own a gun but would do nothing at all to impede the criminal in his getting it done. And in 1980 endorse its first presidential campaign. Ronald Reagan. In the 1990s to gun control laws are passed. But they were relatively limited in scope and Celtics back. Since the Brady bill passed 250000. Felons fugitives. And mentally unstable persons have been stopped from purchasing. Handguns. And then in the early 2000 an hour I really began hitting extract from my cold dead. It rolled out its rating system issuing a plus a politician's most in line. And passed. Those favorite song voters take that system seriously. The right grade makes or breaks a politician's career a few years later and two dozen names in one huge Supreme Court case. Finding that the Second Amendment guaranteed private individuals. And not just a well regulated militia. A constitutional right. 2016. And IRAs and 419. Million dollars on political campaigns and more than. Thirty. On Donald Trump alone. There's no bigger fan of the Second Amendment a mean there's no bigger fan of the NRA it also endorsed front earlier than it had endorsed. Any presidential contender ever. I'm officially announcing the NRA's endorsement. Of Donald Trump for president. Okay. Today and I RA is nearly any master at the top of the political power but is also facing green and new talents. Furious. Teenagers. On you in the name of seventeen people you can now. The entire aid to keep their money out of your campaign after mass shooting in Parkland Florida. Young people have been staging walk outs and coat Tass and demanding exactly the kind of control. The NRA has spent the last few years I. And on many of the students can't even vote. In a few years and Aaron may have more to worry about it. 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